A careful and elaborated study on robots history has shown us that these machines dated long before Christ.

In the year 350 B.C. approximately, Archytas of Tarentum, a genius Greek, is known to have built a mechanical wooden pigeon able to fly, powered by steam. Also philosophers like Aristotle (322 B.C.) had ideas about tools working independently and dreamed about equality among people. A great invention was the water clock made by the Greek engineer, Ctesibus, around the year 200 B.C. representing an automatic clock decorated with movable figures.

Between 1495 and 1770 there were small changes in robotics, inventors built mechanical puppets which had more like an entertainment value. For example, there was the mechanical armored knight of Leonardo Da Vinci, also there were the automatons of Jacques de Vaucanson: one who played the flute, another one who played two instruments like the flute and the drum or the tambourine. He also has a reputation for his mechanical duck which was capable of acting almost like a real one, being able of actions like: quacking, flapping wings, eating and even digesting real food. There are also very well known the automatons of Pierre and Henri-Louis Jaquet-Droz, mechanical puppets that could write, draw and play music.

In 1801 Joseph Jacquard makes a big step in the history of robotics by inventing the automated loom operated by punch cards. Using the idea of the punch cards, Charles Babbage in 1822 he designes two great projects:"Difference Engine" and "The Analytical Engine". He never managed to finish neither of the projects but he is reputed for his work that lays at the base of the binary numbering system used in computers.

In 1921 the term "robot" was used for the first time in the play "R.U.R" or "Rossuum's Universal Robots" by Karel Capek, which meant "mandatory labor" in Czech.

1962 is to be known as the year of the birth of industrial robots, when the robot arm "The Unimate" is invented and used in General Motors assembly line.

In time there are designed more and more robots and machines that are used in different domains like military organization, in medicine and in industries, all developed to help human kind to make the dangerous and the hard work seem easy and be done fast, accurately and precisely.

Source: http://robotics.megagiant.com/history.html