Who invented the word robot? They say it was this artist!

March 23, On This Day

Born on March 23, 1887, Josef Čapek was a Czech artist best known as a painter, but who was also noted as a writer and a poet.

It is believed that he invented the word \”robot\”, which was introduced into literature by his brother, Karel Čapek, a Czech writer, playwright and critic who is often credited with the etymology himself. Others say the word is drawn from an old Church Slavonic word, robota, for “servitude,” “forced labor” or “drudgery”.

Josef was first a painter of the Cubist school, but later developed his own playful, minimalist style. His illustrated stories Povídání o Pejskovi a Kočičce (English translation as The Adventures of Puss and Pup) are considered classics of Czech children\’s literature.

Due to his critical attitude towards national socialism and Adolf Hitler, he was arrested after the German invasion of Czechoslovakia in 1939. He wrote Poems from a Concentration Camp amid the horrors of the hellish Bergen-Belsen concentration camp, where he died in 1945. His remains were never found.

In 1948, the court officially set the date of his death as April 30, 1947.