From water birds to Mars rovers: the 2,300-year journey of robotics

Every robot your child will ever build has an ancestor — some 2,300 years old. This is the story Os tells in every lesson.

Long before silicon chips or electricity, people were already building machines that moved and imitated life. Os travels to six key stops on that journey.

270 BC — The bird that sang with water

Ctesibius built a mechanical singing bird using only water pressure — no batteries, no motors. Robotics starts with understanding forces, not fancy parts.

1495 — A knight who could sit down

Da Vinci designed a mechanical knight with moving joints — 500 years before anyone could build it. He designed it anyway.

1921 — The year robots got their name

Karel Čapek coined the word 'robot' from the Czech word for forced labor — a strange origin for a word that now means adventure to kids.

1961 — The robot that never got tired

Unimate, the first industrial robot, lifted 500 pounds with total precision — proving robots could do real, useful work.

1997 — A robot the size of a microwave, on Mars

Sojourner, the first robot on Mars, moved slower than a kid on a tricycle — and still went somewhere no human ever had.

2026 — Your turn

The next chapter of robotics history isn't written yet. Os thinks it should be written by the kids learning today.