Robot Built from Scrap Still Works after 45 Years in Storage

In 1950, Tony Sale was 19 years old and serving in the British Royal Air Force. He built a human-sized robot out of scrap metal from a crashed Wellington bomber. Sale named the robot George and got quite a bit of press attention at the time. George was used for several years and then put in storage for the next 45. Sale, now 79, recently decided to see if George would still work:

'I dug him out of the garage where he had been standing for 45 years,' he said.

'I had a fair bit of confidence he would work again and luckily I was right.

'I put some oil on the bearings and added a couple of new lithium batteries in his legs, switched him on and away he went. It was a lovely moment.'

Mr Sale has always been interested in mechanics and built his first ‘George’ using Meccano when he was just 12 years old. The instructions for making the robot were in the Meccano manual and it could walk at a steady pace by shuffling its feet.

In 1945 Mr Sale made a second George the robot and three years later at the age of 17 he improved it by making it bigger and controlling it by radio.


Link via Gizmodo | Photo: Geoff Robinson/Daily mail

Comments (4)

Newest 4
Newest 4 Comments

Only one RAF? Surely you remember the Red Army Faction.

Seriously though there have been several Royal Air Forces around the world over the years. Remember there isn't a single royal family in the world, although Victoria did her best to make it so.
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I'd never heard of George until a week ago when he cropped up on Wallace and Grommit's World of Invention. Now he's everywhere. In the early films it appears George is controlled by a morse key. Clever.
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In case anybody is wondering, you don't really need to be able to figure out or understand all the timelines to enjoy the movie. This charting the timelines is just geek timewasting.
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I wouldn't call it 100% timewasting (especially if it was done by one's double while in the period when two versions of that person are in the same timeline oh god I'm a huge geek); it's actually kind of nice to see that someone puzzled it out and found that the whole thing makes sense within the milieu of the film. It could easy have just been mad randomness for the last 20 minutes or so, and it strengthens the film to know it's more rigorous than that.
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Never heard of the movie. Is this like that Inception explanation thing (that I didn't read) that made me think Inception was complicated until I sat down and watched it, and then wondered how anybody could be confused by the plotline?
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