The Visionaries, Madmen, and Tinkerers Who Created the Future That Never Was
THE IRON MAN AND THE TIN WOMAN
image from Babylon Rare Books
Stephen Leacock (1869-1944) was from 1915 to 1925 “the best-known English-speaking humorist in the world”, according to the Canadian Encyclopedia. (If that doesn’t make you want to known whether a better-known non-English-speaking humorist existed and who that was, take up any other career than freelance writer. The missing answer will always haunt me.) Leacock became as associated with Canada as the maple leaf and the Maple Leafs but was actually born in England in 1869. Few humorists in my extensive collection have emerged from less-likely beginnings. Surely a man who was the William Dow Professor of Political Economy at McGill University in Montreal couldn’t simultaneously be a world-renowned humorist. Or perhaps that background made him know which side his bread was buttered on: much of his later work is set in America and comments on American newspaper coverage and popular culture.
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Stephen Leacock in 1931. He looked like the genial tenured professor he was.
Prodigiously productive, Leacock churned out sixteen collections of humorous essays in less than 20 years after his first book, Literacy Lapses, was published in a small edition by an obscure Canadian publisher in 1910. The book caught the attention of London biggie John Lane; from then on almost all his books were simultaneously published in London, Toronto, and New York, giving him a perhaps unfair advantage over all others striving for the best-known title, along with making for incurable headaches among future bibliographers and collectors. (Which is the true first edition? Another question I don’t know the answer to.) It helped that his second collection, Nonsense Novels, full of wild genre parodies before most people understood that genres were a thing, is one of the great humor books of the 20th century. Ever heard he “flung himself upon his horse and rode madly off in all directions.”? Yeah, that’s from Nonsense Novels. To be fair, Canadians consider his third book to be his masterpiece. Sunshine Sketches of a Little Town is a gently humorous nostalgic look at life in small town 19th century Canada, told through short stories.
The Iron Man and the Tin Woman, his 17th collection, their releases interspersed regularly with heavy nonfiction, is loosely themed satire on the madcap instant and omnipresent changes rocking society and culture in the 1920s, changes spurred by technological progress, something the conservative Leacock was often appalled by. The future was also a constant and omnipresent subject of speculation in popular newspapers and magazines, Leacock’s meat. From the perspective of 1929, when the collection was published, that future seemed unstoppable. There would be more change, and then more, and more on top of that. Well, they weren’t wrong, but the first of many bumps in that path would hit hard before the end of the year.
Still, a few of Leacock’s preposterous projections, not meant to be taken seriously, don’t look bad a century later. “Derby Day in 1950” claims that “The invention of the mechanical judge with high-power, 100 lens eyes, similar to those of the fly, and a running spool of registering tape in place of a brain brought for the first time a decision of absolute certainty.” Old stuff in horse racing, except that baseball just introduced an electronic system of calling balls and strikes, and football sometimes offsets final say on yardage gains to central offices far from the field.
Those who think science-fiction writers are responsible for introducing futuristic technologies might be startled to read “More Messages from Mars,” written two years before the word “teleportation” was coined.
I knew, of course, from what our leading scientists have told us that he had come to this earth by a process that will someday be as familiar as the passage of light and radioacting. He had been disembodied and sent over.
I could have explained to him, in a rough and ready sort of way, that his atomic structure had been broken loose and sent across the gulf of empty space and then reassembled itself on this planet.
The concept, often known as matter transmission, dates much farther back. A succinct explanation can be found in "The Man Without a Body" by Edward Page Mitchell, published in 1877. The only difference is that he sent the vibrations down a telegraph wire rather than through space.
"There was no reason why matter could not be telegraphed, or to be etymologically accurate, 'telepomped.' It was only necessary to effect at one end of the line the disintegration of the molecules into atoms and to convey the vibrations of the chemical dissolution by electricity to the other pole, where a corresponding reconstruction could be effected from other atoms. As all atoms are alike, their arrangement into molecules of the same order, and the arrangement of those molecules into an organization similar to the original organization, would be practically a reproduction of the original. It would be a materialization - not in the sense of the spiritualist's cant, but in all the truth and logic of stern science."
Genre science fiction made little use of the concept until the 1930s, where this and a dozen other of Mitchell's seminal ideas - invisibility, time travel, cryogenics, cyborgs, mind transfer, food pills - would be mined, or perhaps reinvented. Most of Mitchell's stories were published anonymously in the New York Sun newspaper and few were republished until a century later. A great loss: the genre could have appeared a half century earlier and gained more literary respect.
For me the most fun, if not the best piece, in the collection was the title story. The name of this section is Robots, after all. I’ve traced it back to a January 1929 syndication in newspapers across America starting on the 13th when it appeared in the Lincoln Star and newspapers in Canada starting the next week. Most gave it the title of “The Iron Man Proposes to the Tin Woman.” All were accompanied by this wonderful cartoon.
![1929-01-19 Saskatoon [SK] Star-Phoenix 19 illus.jpg](https://static.wixstatic.com/media/3a61d0_d01a9043a69d418088a6242d2ce01aa3~mv2.jpg/v1/fill/w_450,h_462,al_c,q_80,usm_0.66_1.00_0.01,enc_avif,quality_auto/1929-01-19%20Saskatoon%20%5BSK%5D%20Star-Phoenix%2019%20illus.jpg)
All, that is, except for the Standard of St Catherines, Ontario, with replaced the robots with this variant.
![1929-01-19 St. Catherine's [ON] Standard 9 illus.jpg](https://static.wixstatic.com/media/3a61d0_79bd7973b95b404184954a7d96c44701~mv2.jpg/v1/fill/w_450,h_476,al_c,q_80,usm_0.66_1.00_0.01,enc_avif,quality_auto/1929-01-19%20St_%20Catherine's%20%5BON%5D%20Standard%209%20illus.jpg)
That image is a contender for all-time Not Getting the Concept status. Why any sober editor would approve this is … well, newspapermen of the day did have a stereotype of copious drinking.
A presumably sober editor for the San Francisco Chronicle had the best sense of humor. When the paper ran the story on the 27th, under the title of “Timid Lover, Let Your Robot Pop Big Question!”, a block of robot cartoons larger than the article ran front and center. Kudos to Billy Lam, whose signature could be found at the bottom.
Enough into. Now that the story has entered the public domain, let me be the first (apparently) to run it in full online, scanned from my personal copy of the book. Lots of commentary will follow.
The Iron Man and the Tin Woman
by Stephen Leacock
The oddest part of the story for a robot historian is this paragraph.
Everybody has been struck by the invention of the Iron Man, the queer mechanical being recently fabricated in Germany and exhibited there and in the United States.
Leacock worked off items in the news, knocking off a short piece virtually every week. Since the story started being syndicated in January 1929, the natural assumption is that the robot referred to was in the news sometime in late 1928.
1928 was a prime year for robot stories. In 1927 Westinghouse engineer Roy Wensley created a machine that could do tasks activated by sound signals sent down a telephone wire. Although conceived of as a control device to be placed in out-of-the-way locations, the people at Westinghouse saw vast promotional benefits in the machine. To the plain box of controls were attached a cartoon head and cardboard body, making "Televox" the friendliest robot ever presented to the public. Wensley, no performer, was forced to take Televox on a publicity tour of America. Out of desperation, another brilliant idea popped into his head. On Washington's birthday in February 1928, Wensley sent a signal to Televox via a whistle that made the arm jerk a string that revealed Washington's portrait and an American flag while an orchestra played the national anthem. Televox was instantly a glorious symbol of American ingenuity and all-around Americanism.
Wikimedia
That was oddly necessary. Robot was then a vogue word applied not just to mechanical men but to any automated process. Naturally the militaries of the world were interested in automation, with the memory of the epically bloody Great War foremost in every army brain. Robot tanks, planes, and guns made headlines in 1928. Scare articles about brainless but remorseless robot troops slaughtering helpless humans worked as well in frightening readers then as today. A robot that appeared subservient to human control was a necessary antidote for robot development.
Leacock almost certainly knew about Televox after a year of publicity, but the near immobile robot lacked all the other attributes that gave the Iron Man its charms. Here's Leacock again.
The Iron Man talks with a photograph drum, sees with high-powered convex mirrors, and gets his electricity stored inside of him at 2,000 volts.
The Iron Man, it seems, is able to walk. He can walk across the floor of a room, step up on a platform, bow, and take his seat. ...
He is able, if you put a speech in his stomach, to reel it off his chest without a single fault or error.
With due allowance for comic hyperbole, "Eric" was a 1928 robot who better fit that description. Built from aluminum with a face of steel, Eric debuted at an exhibition run by the Society of Model Engineers.
Cyberneticzoo.com
An unsigned full-page article in the October 24, 1928, issue of The World's News of Sydney, Australia, told readers the breadth of Eric's achievements as Captain W. H. Richards, his designer and secretary of the exhibition, puts him through his paces, all driven by a 12-volt motor..
"Stand up," cried Captain Richards, brusquely.
I can only say that Eric pondered a moment, and agreed. He made a whirring noise, and lurched unerringly to his full height of more than six feet.
"Sit down," came the command. Eric grunted and obeyed.
He stood up again when told, and at the command, "Lift right arm," Eric's formidable limb swept majestically up, and gave a Fascist salute. At the words, "Move head right," he turned his head, and fixed me in a glassy stare from two small electric bulbs.
He can lift either arm or both arms together; he can move his head right or left, and he can make a polite bow. Most remarkable of all, he can also talk - through a diaphragm in his cranium...
![1928-10-10 Lancaster {PA] New Era 6 cartoon.jpg](https://static.wixstatic.com/media/3a61d0_f3b569588ff9439586f2c1771e108b31~mv2.jpg/v1/fill/w_600,h_548,al_c,q_80,usm_0.66_1.00_0.01,enc_avif,quality_auto/1928-10-10%20Lancaster%20%7BPA%5D%20New%20Era%206%20cartoon.jpg)
Lancaster [PA] New Era, October 10, 1928
Eric comes close, but as the pictures and cartoons make clear, he didn't walk a single step. Moreover, he was the proud product of British engineering just as Televox was as American as cherry pie. Crediting a German inventor made no sense at all, comic exaggeration or not.
Just as a footnote, 1928 England saw yet another robot at yet another exhibition. Technology exhibitions were all the rage back then, a way to show off the quickly evolving technologies to the masses along with other popular pastimes: a sort of mini-World's Fair that didn't have to compete with other countries (although sometimes they had small exhibits). December saw the "Schoolboys' Own Exhibition" also in London. (To ease modern minds, be assured that schoolgirls also attended and had exhibits aimed at them, though not as military as the ones for boys.)
Two totally different robots made the headlines. One, called a "robot commissionaire" (basically a doorman, or perhaps concierge) - "somewhat in the outer form of the human species" - provided answers over a wide range of possible questions, from directions to exhibits or food to what to do if you were lost. Named the Celestion Umavox - Televox's influence no doubt - the Celestion company, then and now, manufactured speakers. Which inevitably suggests that the commissionaire was little more a conduit to someone backstage with a microphone, a marketing gimmick to show off sound clarity that would induce the parents of the schoolkids to buy one of their speakers for the newfangled radios they had recently installed. A good idea, given that the robot impressed the adult reporters as much as it must have awed the kids. Here is the best, i.e. only, picture that I could find. Note that the face also has a marked resemblance to Televox's.
London Daily Herald, December 29, 1928
Far more robot-y and visually better preserved for posterity was the mechanical man with an open chest showing the workings of the human body.
Glascow Daily Record and Mail, December 31, 1928
The London Daily Telegraph reporter seemed more impressed than the stoic kids pictured.
With fiery eyes he glares at his visitors, but press a button and he gets going. His heart turns over and he starts circulating what is to him the-life-blood, the lungs begin to work, and the whole human system is seen performing its breathing and digestive operations.
If Eric and Umavox were the proud products of British engineering and Televox was as American as cherry pie, Leacock's crediting of a German inventor made no sense at all, comic exaggeration or not.
Indeed, in all my research into robots I've only come across one early German inventor of a robot, one of the oddest tales in robot history.
Occultus was introduced to the world in 1909 by Otto Widman, later calling himself Adolph Whitman. A stocky figure about six feet tall, Occultus looked like a bearded man and purportedly had all the capabilities of one.
Evansville [IN] Press, June 3, 1914
Occultus was also introduced to the world in London, then the center of innovation in the English-speaking world, but made an extensive of the United States in 1914, producing gushing articles that promised wonders and horrors galore, like this one from the The Fort Wayne Sentinel on June 20, 1914.
"I hold the world in the palm of my hand: I could be emperor of the universe; I could make the terrestrial globe my personal property! For I've invented an artificial man who could compel all other men to become my slaves!"
So says Herr Adolph Whitman, famous Berlin Inventor. He has constructed of wheels and chains and levers an artificial man who walks, talks, mingles with a crowd just as naturally as any real man would. This machine-man is the outcome of many years laborious and painstaking application of Whitman's wonderful inventive genius.
He calls his mechanical man "Occultus."
"Occultus obeys my every order." says Whitman. "Whether I tell him to run, to turn, to stop, to lift something, to sit down, to sing, whistle or answer question, he obeys implicly and without hesitation. I could walk him into a crowded parlor and he would act so naturally that half the evening might pass before the guests realized that they had a mysterious and occult person among them.
"The secret of making my artificial men is simple. I shall soon be able to construct them by the hundreds in special factories.
"Just imagine what I can do when I begin to turn these mechanical men out by the wholesale. I could organize them into a vast army, and train it to an automatic perfection in military tactics. Then, armed with the most destructive weapons of modern warfare, my hordes on non-killable soldiers could set forth to conquer the continents.
"I could sweep the face of Europe clean in one campaign. Bullets, bombs, shells—my armies would he impervious to them all. Faster than my men fell, I could turn out new ones in my factories."
The name "Occultus" should have been a giveaway. Whitman's - or Widman's - line of outrageously hyperbolic patter is little different from the quacks today who sell hexagonal water or quantum cosmetics. For a supposedly "famous inventor," his name oddly appears nowhere other than in these promotional articles. Whitman was a huckster fraud, who kept a good thing going for at least a decade. Needless to say, no second bearded wonder ever appeared, let alone armed hordes. Walking was as far beyond Occultus' power as his ability to speak without a phonograph record. Also needless to say, those armed hordes continued to haunt the public through Televox's era and beyond.
Other than qualifying as a German invention exhibited in the United States, can any reason be found for Leacock to conflate Occultus with the other robots of 1928?
Perhaps. Although most early robots vanished into the maw of oblivion called yesterday's news, the striking photo of the bearded mechanical man with the cogwheel chest lived on to adorn future articles on the coming robot hordes. It's to be found in a syndicated piece from Sunday, May 4, 1924, with headlines proclaiming "Radio Police Automatons?/Gigantic Iron Men with Flashing Eyes, Roaring Voices, Swinging Deadly Clubs and Spraying Poisonous Tear Gases." If you were too jaded or stupefied by bathtub gin to take fright, the accompanying artist's conception would give even schoolboys the heebie-jeebies. The author's name was given as H. Gernsback, the same Hugo Gernsback whose Amazing Stories would become the first science fiction pulp two years later. At the time he was running Science and Invention magazine. The syndicated article borrowed the robot policeman from an article in the May 2024 issue, accompanied by an even more terrifying illustration of a line of these ten-foot-tall monstrosities "manhandling" a mob.
San Francisco Examiner, May 4, 1924
Even better, the same set of papers ran another syndicated feature extrapolating the future of robots on June 8, 1928. The existential opposite of Gernsback's scare piece, this one was from Scientific American, tagging onto Televox's friendly mien and the female robot named Maria that a few lucky Americans saw if their city ran Fritz Lang's lengthy masterpiece Metropolis. The headline? "Romantic Old Maids Can Hear the Words of Love They Long For/Professor Wensley's "Mechanical Man" Is Now So Well Perfected, the Obedient Robot Will Say Anything You Want Him To, Will Answer Questions to Suit You, and Put His Arms 'Round Your Neck." I didn't say that Scientific American wrote the headlines.
Wensley is quoted as predicting useful tasks for his Voxes.
How convenient it would be for the housewife, when a storm comes up, just to telephone her robot and say, "shut the windows." Not only would the robot do that, but he would reply, "Madame, your command has been obeyed, the windows are all shut." She could then go about her affairs with piece of mind. ...
The possibilities of these robots are literally astonishing.
Now this is a robotic future a humorist could have even more fun with than the article's artist.
San Francisco Examiner, June 8, 1924
I love that the robot has the mustache of a dashing roué and the feet of a fascist robot policeman.
With that headline and the image of Occultus, I strongly believe that this 1928 article, probably helped by the publicity given to the London exhibitions, gave Leacock the germ of "The Iron Man and the Tin Woman."
From killing machine to obedient servant, robots in 1928 thrilled audiences with the astonishing possibilities, for good or evil, that Wensley foresaw. Leacock had the good fortune to have minds prepped for his burlesque.
April 28, 2026