Thanks to Wired for pointing out to us that on this day in 1921 Karel Čapek's "Rossum's Universal Robots" premiered at the National Theater in Prague. This play in one fell swoop introduced both the term Robot, and the assumption that they will kill us all.
From the play:
HELENA: ...why don’t you make them happier?
HALLEMEIER: We couldn’t do that, they’re only robots after all. They’ve got no will of their own. No passions. No hopes. No soul.
HELENA: And no love and no courage?
HALLEMEIER: Well of course they don’t feel love. Robots don’t love anything, not even themselves. And courage? I’m not so sure about that; a couple of times, not very often, mind, they have shown some resistance ...
And so it begins. By the end of the play all humans save one have been killed, and the robots rediscover love.
Read the full play here at WikiSource.
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