The First Turtles (1940s-1960s)
Turtles have been walking and swimming for millions of years.
Humans came along much later.
In the 1940s, a human named William Grey Walter decided to make a Turtle robot.
Why? Because they wanted to see how a simple brain responded to stimuli, and (probably) because robots were fun and interesting.
The original Turtles were Elmer and Elsie.
They were built between 1948 and 1949 out of war surplus and alarm clocks.
Each had a light or touch sensor attached to a pair of motors.
The record's not clear, but I'm pretty sure those motors controlled rotation and forward movement.
Turtles went on to become a teaching tool and inspiration to a generation of roboticists, and the first generation of turtle robots were born!
These robots all worked from the foundational principles of the first turtles:
- Stay simple
- Make instructions easy
- Think of movement in relative terms
This generation brought on a lot of industrial innovation, with the rise of CNC robots.
These robots opened up a whole new door for the human race.
We could now make any shape we wanted, thanks to the pioneering work of a pair of turtles.
Turtles shape the world around us, and almost all robots descend from turtles (even if they don't know it).
The elegant machine controlled curves relative motion could create were formalized by Pierre Bézier, and these curves changed culture as they became more widespread.
Bézier curves were created in the 1960s, and helped give us the aesthetic of the swinging 60s.
In the mid 60s, a few educators and programmers would start the next generation of turtles, and help open the doors of the universe.