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Moxon's Master
"Moxon's Master" is a short story by American writer Ambrose Bierce, which speculates on the nature of life and intelligence. It describes a chess-playing automaton that murders its creator. First published in ''The San Francisco Examiner'' on April 16, 1899, it is one of the first descriptions of a robot in English-language literature written much before the word 'robot' came to be used. The story was included in the 1910 edition of the short story anthology ''Can Such Things Be?''. Plot summary The master, Moxon, who creates a chess-playing automaton, boasts to the narrator that even though machines have no brains, they can still think and demonstrate intelligence or mind and therefore should be treated just like men of flesh and blood. After a thorough discussion about what it means to "think" and what is the nature of "intelligence", the narrator leaves Moxon's house in confusion. The narrator returns to Moxon's house later in the midst of a rainstorm to learn more. He enters ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Short Story
A short story is a piece of prose fiction that typically can be read in one sitting and focuses on a self-contained incident or series of linked incidents, with the intent of evoking a single effect or mood. The short story is one of the oldest types of literature and has existed in the form of legends, mythic tales, folk tales, fairy tales, tall tales, fables and anecdotes in various ancient communities around the world. The modern short story developed in the early 19th century. Definition The short story is a crafted form in its own right. Short stories make use of plot, resonance, and other dynamic components as in a novel, but typically to a lesser degree. While the short story is largely distinct from the novel or novella/short novel, authors generally draw from a common pool of literary techniques. The short story is sometimes referred to as a genre. Determining what exactly defines a short story has been recurrently problematic. A classic definition of a short story ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
List Of Fictional Robots And Androids
Robots and androids have frequently been depicted or described in works of fiction. The word "robot" itself comes from a work of fiction, Karel Čapek's play, ''R.U.R. (Rossum's Universal Robots)'', written in 1920 and first performed in 1921. This list of fictional robots and androids is chronological, and categorised by medium. It includes all depictions of robots, androids and gynoids in literature, television, and cinema; however, robots that have appeared in more than one form of media are not necessarily listed in each of those media. This list is intended for all fictional computers which are described as existing in a humanlike or mobile form. It shows how the concept has developed in the human imagination through history. Theatre * ''Coppélia'', a life-size dancing doll in the ballet of the same name, choreographed by Marius Petipa with music by Léo Delibes (1870) * The word ''robot'' comes from Karel Čapek's play, ''R.U.R. (Rossum's Universal Robots)'', written in ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
1899 In Chess
Events January 1899 * January 1 ** Spanish rule ends in Cuba, concluding 400 years of the Spanish Empire in the Americas. ** Queens and Staten Island become administratively part of New York City. * January 2 – **Bolivia sets up a customs office in Puerto Alonso, leading to the Brazilian settlers there to declare the Republic of Acre in a revolt against Bolivian authorities. **The first part of the Jakarta Kota–Anyer Kidul railway on the island of Java is opened between Batavia Zuid ( Jakarta Kota) and Tangerang. * January 3 – Hungarian Prime Minister Dezső Bánffy fights an inconclusive duel with his bitter enemy in parliament, Horánszky Nándor. * January 4 – **U.S. President William McKinley's declaration of December 21, 1898, proclaiming a policy of benevolent assimilation of the Philippines as a United States territory, is announced in Manila by the U.S. commander, General Elwell Otis, and angers independence activists who had fought against Spa ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Short Stories About Chess
Short may refer to: Places * Short (crater), a lunar impact crater on the near side of the Moon * Short, Mississippi, an unincorporated community * Short, Oklahoma, a census-designated place People * Short (surname) * List of people known as the Short Arts, entertainment, and media * Short film, a cinema format (also called film short or short subject) * Short story, prose generally readable in one sitting * ''The Short-Timers'', a 1979 semi-autobiographical novel by Gustav Hasford, about military short-timers in Vietnam Brands and enterprises * Short Brothers, a British aerospace company * Short Brothers of Sunderland, former English shipbuilder Computing and technology * Short circuit, an accidental connection between two nodes of an electrical circuit * Short integer, a computer datatype Finance * Short (finance), stock-trading position * Short snorter, a banknote signed by fellow travelers, common during World War II Foodstuffs * Short pastry, one which is rich in butte ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Chess Automatons
Chess is a board game for two players, called White and Black, each controlling an army of chess pieces in their color, with the objective to checkmate the opponent's king. It is sometimes called international chess or Western chess to distinguish it from related games, such as xiangqi (Chinese chess) and shogi (Japanese chess). The recorded history of chess goes back at least to the emergence of a similar game, chaturanga, in seventh-century India. The rules of chess as we know them today emerged in Europe at the end of the 15th century, with standardization and universal acceptance by the end of the 19th century. Today, chess is one of the world's most popular games, played by millions of people worldwide. Chess is an abstract strategy game that involves no hidden information and no use of dice or cards. It is played on a chessboard with 64 squares arranged in an eight-by-eight grid. At the start, each player controls sixteen pieces: one king, one queen, two rooks, t ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Robots In Literature
Artificial humans and autonomous artificial servants have a long history in human culture, though the term Robot and its modern literary conception as a mobile machine equipped with an advanced artificial intelligence are more fairly recent. The literary role of artificial life has evolved over time: early myths present animated objects as instruments of divine will, later stories treat their attempted creation as a blasphemy with inevitable consequences, and modern tales range from apocalyptic warnings against blind technological progress to explorations of the ethical questions raised by the possibility of sentient machines. Recently, a popular overview of the history of androids, robots, cyborgs and replicants from antiquity to the present has been published. Treated fields of knowledge are: history of technology, history of medicine, philosophy, literature, film and art history, the range of topics discussed is worldwide. Early uses The earliest examples were all presented ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Short Stories By Ambrose Bierce
Short may refer to: Places * Short (crater), a lunar impact crater on the near side of the Moon * Short, Mississippi, an unincorporated community * Short, Oklahoma, a census-designated place People * Short (surname) * List of people known as the Short Arts, entertainment, and media * Short film, a cinema format (also called film short or short subject) * Short story, prose generally readable in one sitting * ''The Short-Timers'', a 1979 semi-autobiographical novel by Gustav Hasford, about military short-timers in Vietnam Brands and enterprises * Short Brothers, a British aerospace company * Short Brothers of Sunderland, former English shipbuilder Computing and technology * Short circuit, an accidental connection between two nodes of an electrical circuit * Short integer, a computer datatype Finance * Short (finance), stock-trading position * Short snorter, a banknote signed by fellow travelers, common during World War II Foodstuffs * Short pastry, one which is rich in butte ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Science Fiction Short Stories
Science is a systematic endeavor that builds and organizes knowledge in the form of testable explanations and predictions about the universe. Science may be as old as the human species, and some of the earliest archeological evidence for scientific reasoning is tens of thousands of years old. The earliest written records in the history of science come from Ancient Egypt and Mesopotamia in around 3000 to 1200 BCE. Their contributions to mathematics, astronomy, and medicine entered and shaped Greek natural philosophy of classical antiquity, whereby formal attempts were made to provide explanations of events in the physical world based on natural causes. After the fall of the Western Roman Empire, knowledge of Greek conceptions of the world deteriorated in Western Europe during the early centuries (400 to 1000 CE) of the Middle Ages, but was preserved in the Muslim world during the Islamic Golden Age and later by the efforts of Byzantine Greek scholars who brought Greek man ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
1899 Short Stories
Events January 1899 * January 1 ** Spanish rule ends in Cuba, concluding 400 years of the Spanish Empire in the Americas. ** Queens and Staten Island become administratively part of New York City. * January 2 – **Bolivia sets up a customs office in Porto Acre, Puerto Alonso, leading to the Brazilian settlers there to declare the Republic of Acre in a revolt against Bolivian authorities. **The first part of the Jakarta Kota–Anyer Kidul railway on the island of Java is opened between Batavia Zuid (Jakarta Kota railway station, Jakarta Kota) and Tangerang railway station, Tangerang. * January 3 – Hungarian Prime Minister Dezső Bánffy fights an inconclusive duel with his bitter enemy in parliament, Horánszky Nándor. * January 4 – **U.S. President William McKinley's declaration of December 21, 1898, proclaiming a policy of benevolent assimilation of the Philippines as a United States territory, is announced in Manila by the U.S. commander, General Elwel ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Carey McWilliams (journalist)
Carey McWilliams (December 13, 1905 – June 27, 1980) was an American author, editor, and lawyer. He is best known for his writings about California politics and culture, including the condition of migrant farm workers and the internment of Japanese Americans during World War II. From 1955 to 1975, he edited ''The Nation'' magazine. Early years McWilliams was born December 13, 1905 in Steamboat Springs, Colorado. He first came to California in 1922, after a collapse in the cattle market ruined his father's health and his family's finances. McWilliams attended the University of Southern California from which he obtained a law degree in 1927.Francis X. Gannon, ''Biographical Dictionary of the Left: Volume 1.'' Boston: Western Islands Publishers, 1969; pp. 452–454. From 1927 to 1938, McWilliams practiced law in Los Angeles at Black, Hammock & Black. Some of his cases, including his defense of striking Mexican citrus workers, prefigured his later writing. During the 1920s a ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Walker Chess-player
The Walker Chess-player was a chess-playing "machine" created by the Walker Brothers of Baltimore, Maryland. The machine was produced in the 1820s to compete with The Turk, a world-famous chess "machine". Johann Nepomuk Mälzel, a Bavarian musician with an interest in various machines and devices who owned and operated the Turk, viewed the competing machine and attempted to buy it, but the offer was declined and the duplicate machine toured for a number of years, never receiving the fame that Mälzel's machine did, and eventually fell into obscurity. These 19th-century machines were hoaxes that disguised a human player with stage-magic devices; unlike modern chess playing machines which play without human intervention. References * Tom Standage, ''The Turk: The Life and Times of the Famous Eighteenth-Century Chess-Playing Machine''. Walker and Company, New York City, 2002. * Gerald M. Levitt, ''The Turk, Chess Automaton''. McFarland and Company Inc. Publishers, Jefferson, Nort ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Mechanical Turk
The Turk, also known as the Mechanical Turk or Automaton Chess Player (german: Schachtürke, ; hu, A Török), was a fraudulent chess-playing machine constructed in the late 18th century. From 1770 until its destruction by fire in 1854 it was exhibited by various owners as an automaton, though it was eventually revealed to be an elaborate hoax.See Schaffer, Simon (1999), "Enlightened Automata", in Clark et al. (Eds), ''The Sciences in Enlightened Europe'', Chicago and London, The University of Chicago Press, pp. 126–165. Constructed and unveiled in 1770 by Wolfgang von Kempelen (1734–1804) to impress Empress Maria Theresa of Austria, the mechanism appeared to be able to play a strong game of chess against a human opponent, as well as perform the knight's tour, a puzzle that requires the player to move a knight to occupy every square of a chessboard exactly once. The Turk was in fact a mechanical illusion that allowed a human chess master hiding inside to operate the machin ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
