Boilerplate: History’s Mechanical Marvel

There are those who pass through history and go unnoticed. Boilerplate the world’s first mechanical marvel is one of those creatures or should we say machines. How could history miss the chronicles of the globetrotting robot who met some of the greatest men in the late 19th and early 20th century. This fanciful creation is the handy work of husband and wife team of Paul Guinan and Anina Bennett who came up with the idea of Boilerplate. The partly steampunk based hero is a fun romp like the likes of a Captain Nemo story of purloined 20th century technology in the 19th century. Read more>>

Meet Boilerplate, the world’s first robot soldier—not in a present-day military lab or a science-fiction movie, but in the past, during one of the most fascinating periods of U.S. history. Designed by Professor Archibald Campion in 1893 as a prototype, for the self-proclaimed purpose of “preventing the deaths of men in the conflicts of nations,” Boilerplate charged into combat alongside such notables as Teddy Roosevelt and Lawrence of Arabia. Campion and his robot also circled the planet with the U.S. Navy, trekked to the South Pole, made silent movies, and hobnobbed with the likes of Mark Twain and Nikola Tesla.