How have I never seen this before? Elektro was a humanoid robot manufactured by Westinghouse for the 1939 (!) World's Fair in New York City. He had a brain made out of 48 relays, a built-in 78-rpm record player which let him speak, some kind of very basic voice command system, photoelectric eyes, and a mechanical body about seven feet high.

Primitive or not, the mere fact that they could build a machine capable of "walking" on a level surface without falling over, of responding to the most basic voice commands, and of incredibly crude but not embarrassing speech synthesis, with 1939 technology, is kind of amazing.

Isaac Asimov was 19 years old. If you ever wondered where the mid-century's visions of the future came from, it was from things like this.