P412 412 CHILDREN 03:22:28 WHAT WERE FIRST ANDROIDS LIKE? Modern robots are about thirty years old. But "mechanical men" appeared much earlier. For example, archeologists have found a doll with movable hands and legs in ancient Egyptian pyramids. A German scientist Albert the Great worked for 30 years (1216-1246) to make his iron man which then served as a doorman: it opened the door and raised its hands greeting the guests. But one of the guests was so strongly frightened by it that he fought the doorman and completely destroyed it. A father and a son, the Droz, from Switzerland (18th century), invented a series of mechanical men: a little scribe, a musician and an artist. The scribe held a pen in its right hand, dipped into ink and wrote beautiful, even lines on paper. The see njxt page >>>