Miss Honeywell (1968)
Hailed by the newsreel company British Pathé as the “world’s first robotic woman,” this blue robot could do any number of human activities. That was because she was just a human dressed a robot costume.
The “robot,” known as Miss Honeywell, emerges from a cabinet after an assistant pantomimes attaching her head and putting in the right electronics.
The operator twists some knobs on his console, and Miss Honeywell comes to life, jerking and moving like a 5-year-old trying to pretend they’re a robot. Unfortunately, we don’t have any polling to show just how many people in 1968 were taken in by the cheap trick, but with such amazing technological advances happening at rapid speed in the late 1960s—the moon landing was just a year away—you can’t judge passersby too harshly.
