Young Rossum started with twelve-foot Superrobots but they kept falling apart so he began manufacturing Robots of normal human height and respectable human shape. Since the prologue is peppered alternately with satire, comedy and black humor, it’s as if the creators of that Chaplin film mined a number of ideas from Čapek’s play.ģ. The central director continues: “Production should be as simple as possible and the product the best for its function.” And “The creation of an engineer is technically more refined than the product of nature.” The spirit of these statements was captured magnificently in the film “Modern Times” with Charlie Chaplin. Speed and machines even made headway in the world of art some year prior, especially among the Italian Futurists such as Mainetti, Boccioni and Bella.Ģ. states: “If you can’t do it faster than nature, what’s the point?” Let’s not forget this is 1920, the engineer is king and speed, machines, factories and efficiency are all the rage. After all, as the present central director of R.U.R. Old man Rossum was a biologist who failed to create actual humans in his laboratory engineer son Rossum invented the living labor machine, the Robot, a natural progression of production (son) following discovery (father).

– Rossum’s Universal Robots – mass produced, human-like machines to perform manual labor and function as servants.ġ. And, yes, this play marks the very first appearance of the term “Robot” as in R.U.R. Here are ten philosophical insights embedded in the extended prologue to this highly inventive 1920 science fiction three-act play by Czechoslovakian author Karel Čapek.

R.U.R. by Josef/Karel Capek