I'm Japanese, and this is the first I've heard of Gakutensoku. If you asked people in Japan for an old Japanese "robot", I think most would come up with this tea-carrying karakuri doll.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Karakuri_puppet
That one predates the word "robot" entirely. The design is documented in a 1796 book called "Karakuri Zui", so Edo period, shoguns still in charge.
ginko 3 days ago [-]
Yeah, I was about to object that this is essentially a large automaton of which there are tons of earlier examples from Japan.
I like to think he's in some wealthy parlor somewhere, sequestered away, bringing mirth and humanity to an elite few who need it most of all.
ludamn 3 days ago [-]
[dead]
miki_mq 3 days ago [-]
I have zero knowledge of Japanese but in the description's first line it is 學天則, but in the picture the text is 則天學.
jankcorn 3 days ago [-]
When Japanese is written horizontally, it can be read either left->right or right->left. (occasionally, quite bewildering)
I have only seen right->left on signs; I have never seen it in books or magazines.
wren6991 3 days ago [-]
It's technically not right-to-left. It's columnar top-to-bottom (縦書き), with the columns right-to-left.
In signage you can have one character per column (kind of like one word per row on some English signs), making it look like right-to-left text.
seoulbigchris 2 days ago [-]
Korea does this, also. Sometimes I'll get confused at a restaurant or other sign that is just 2x2 array of syllables. Is this horizontal or vertical? Even more confusing is when it can be sensibly read either way.
CarVac 3 days ago [-]
I've mostly seen it on the right side of vehicle livery.
tantalor 3 days ago [-]
Automaton
Rendered at 09:46:52 GMT+0000 (Coordinated Universal Time) with Vercel.
That one predates the word "robot" entirely. The design is documented in a 1796 book called "Karakuri Zui", so Edo period, shoguns still in charge.
> the details of its disappearance are unknown
A mystery! Someone will know...
* Appearance in Korea at an expo (1928, 1929?): https://www.kci.go.kr/kciportal/landing/article.kci?arti_id=...
* The creator writing about it in 1931 (reference 10 on the same page)
Shanghai but uncertain date.
Was it dismantled in either Korea or China, or shipped back and dismantled, or destroyed?
"touring Germany when he was somehow lost...
"In 2008, the Osaka Science Museum produced a new Gakutensoku. At 10'6", the new golden-skinned automata...
https://www.atlasobscura.com/places/gakutensoku
--- More on Nishimura & motives: https://spectrum.ieee.org/the-short-strange-life-of-the-firs...
I have only seen right->left on signs; I have never seen it in books or magazines.
In signage you can have one character per column (kind of like one word per row on some English signs), making it look like right-to-left text.