Gods and Robots by Mayor Adrienne

Author:Mayor, Adrienne
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9780691185446
Publisher: Princeton University Press

Hephaestus’s self-moving tripods and automated female servants have piqued the interest of historians of robotics. Their glamor overshadows yet another set of automated objects that have received less attention, although they too perform specialized labor in Hephaestus’s forge.37 Invented in antiquity to deliver more air to increase combustion and heat, real bellows technology was crucial in the development of metallurgy, which requires extremely hot fires. Later in the Iliad scene (18.468–74), Hephaestus sets in motion twenty bellows that are self-operating and self-adjusting according to his needs. In the scene, Hephaestus “turns the bellows toward the fire and gives them their orders for working. The bellows begin to blow on the crucibles, blasting forced air from all directions wherever he required hotter or lower flames, following him as Hephaestus goes to and fro, working on his great anvil with his ponderous hammer and tongs.” Like the automated doors of Olympus that open and close on their own, the traveling tripods, and the Golden Maidens, the bank of automatic bellows to stoke the blacksmith’s fires were imaginary mechanical, laborsaving machines, doing work that would otherwise be done by living assistants or slaves.38

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