So I was reading a passage from a Russian laborer in 1876 and they mentioned the phrase “as automatically as a robot”. How would they know the definition of robot, though, if they did not know what a robot was? The first instance of the use of robot in modern sense was in 1920, and it traditionally in Russian mean’t a poor laborer-could that be it? It’s a passage from Praskovia Ivanovskaia and Galina Cheriavskia, and part of it is as follows; “At four in the morning, as the sun's rays were just beginning to spill over the steppe, the overseer would wake us, kicking the legs of those who wouldn't get up immediately.... In the morning, we froze from the bitterly cold dew, which drenched our clothing up to the waist. Staggering along, still half asleep, we worked as automatically as robots, gradually warming up a bit.”