Tik-Tok is a fictional "mechanical man" from the Oz books by American author L. Frank Baum. He has been termed "the prototype robot", and is widely considered to be one of the first robots to appear in modern literature, though the term "Robot" was not used until the 1920s, in the play R.U.R.
Tik-Tok in Little Wizard Stories of Oz, 1914.
Tik-Tok in Tik-Tok of Oz, 1914.
R.U.R. is a 1920 Science fiction play by the Czech writer Karel Čapek. "R.U.R." stands for Rossumovi Univerzální Roboti. The play had its world premiere on 2 January 1921 in Hradec Králové; it introduced the word "robot" to the English language and to science fiction as a whole. R.U.R. became influential soon after its publication. By 1923, it had been translated into thirty languages. R.U.R. was successful in its time in Europe and North America. Čapek later took a different approach to the same theme in his 1936 novel War with the Newts, in which non-humans become a servant-class in human society.
Cover of the first edition of the play designed by Josef Čapek, Aventinum, Prague, 1920
The robots breaking into the factory at the end of Act II
A scene from the play, showing three robots
Final scene of Act II
