Where was the word robot born?

Where was the word robot born?

“WHERE WAS THE WORD ROBOT BORN?”

If you think it originated in the USA or Japan, you are very much mistaken. The word robot actually comes from the words “robota” and “robotník” and originated in Slovakia. The story is connected with the Czech writer Karel Čapek, who spent time in Trenčianske Teplice as a child, staying at the Poniatowski spa house and regularly spending holidays there with his family. During his stays in this spa town, he enjoyed playing, creating and developing new ideas.

At the beginning of the 1920s, the idea for a new play began to take shape — the work we now know as R.U.R. It featured artificially created humanoid beings. Karel Čapek did not know what to call them, so he consulted his brother Josef Čapek, a painter and writer. Josef suggested the name “robot”, derived from the words robota and robotník. The word later spread throughout the world.

The approximate place in Trenčianske Teplice where, according to local tradition, this idea was born is commemorated by a marker at Hotel PAX.