Quasar Robot Dusting

Jacob, a Quasar Robot

I was all excited about this robot when it was announced in the mid-1970's by Quasar Corporation. It was all over the newspapers, on TV shows, and in magazines. It could supposedly vacuum, dust, cook meals, walk the dog, do the laundry, etc., etc. It responded to voice commands, although I don't know if I ever heard one speak. Even at age 14 I was a little suspicious of the fact that it didn't appear to have anything resembling contact sensors, cameras, sonar, radar, or any other way of knowing where it was or what it was doing, but most people didn't seem to notice. Some time later, the Quasar robot quietly disappeared from the media spotlight, never to be seen again. After some research, I found that one of the division managers at Quasar had decided that they were going to sell a robot, dammit, and it didn't matter that none of the technology they needed even existed at the time. That was a simple matter for the engineers to worry about. The robots that appeared in the media, in the meantime, were apparently radio-controlled by humans who just happened to be hanging around when the robot made an appearance. I even suspect that they might have had a guy in a suit for some of the things it did, although I've never seen that confirmed. After successfully scamming not only the public, but also his managers at Quasar, for many months, the guy apparently confessed that he pulled the whole idea out of his ass and then slunk off in humiliation, never to be heard from again. It was a crushing blow for yours-truly, a budding robotics enthusiast, and a sad day for roboticists everywhere. Every time somebody faked a robot doing something really impressive, it made the real ones look pretty lame, even if they were really breaking new ground...

Quasar even had Dakin make a plastic Quasar Robot coin bank... I wanted one for a long time, but it wasn't until a decade later, through the magic of eBay, that I finally got my wish...

 

tah-dah...

Quasar Robot Toy