Robot or automaton mechanical device designed to perform the work generally done by a human being. The Czech dramatist Karel Čapek popularized the expression [Czech,=compulsory labor] in his p...

Agawam, town (1990 pop. 27,323), Hampden co., S Mass., on the Connecticut River; settled 1636, inc. 1855. Largely residential, the town has robotics, machinery, electronic-equipment, and aircr...

Kentucky, University of, mainly at Lexington; coeducational; land-grant and state supported; opened 1865 as part of Kentucky Univ., became a separate state agricultural and mechanical college ...

Čapek, Karel 1890–1938, Czech playwright, novelist, and essayist. He is best known as the author of two brilliant satirical plays—R. U. R. (Rossum's Universal Robots, 1921, tr. 1923), which in...

Ride, Sally K. 1951–, American astrophysicist and astronaut, b. Encino, Calif. With a Ph.D. in physics from Stanford Univ., she joined NASA in 1978, where she was an astronaut (1979–87) and he...

Marianas trench, Marianas trough, or Marianas deep, elongated depression on the Pacific Ocean floor, 210 mi (338 km) SW of Guam. It is the deepest (35,798.6 ft/10,911.5 m at Challenger Deep) k...

Rhode Island, University of, at Kingston; coeducational; land-grant and state-supported; chartered 1888, opened as a school 1890, as an agricultural and mechanical college 1892. From 1909 to 1...

Red Wing, city (1990 pop. 15,134), seat of Goodhue co., SE Minn., on the Mississippi River at the head of Lake Pepin; inc. 1857. It is a commercial and manufacturing center in the Hiawatha val...

Automation, automatic operation and control of machinery or processes by devices, such as robots that can make and execute decisions without human intervention. The principal feature of such d...

Asimov, Isaac, 1920–92, American author and scientist, b. Petrovichi, USSR, grad. Columbia Univ. (B.S., 1939; M.A., 1941; Ph.D., 1948). An astonishingly prolific author, he wrote over 400 book...