Introducing ChairPerson
tm
A Revolution in Committee Management
 Ideal committee chair
 Delegates authority
 Special “Features”
 Occasionally, one leg falls off
 Refuses to write reports
“Seat of Power”
Technology 451:
How to Make Your Own
Mechanical Hound
Tom Rebold, MPC Engineering Instructor
Technology 451
 What role does Technology play in F451?
 What was Bradbury’s inspiration for the
Mechanical Hound?
 Has anyone created a Mechanical Hound?
 How can you build your own robots?
Sci-Fi vs Sci-Fact
 A self perpetuating loop
Bradbury’s Mechanical Hound…
 The mechanical Hound slept but did not sleep, lived
but did not live in its gently humming, gently
vibrating, softly illuminated kennel back in a dark
corner of the fire house.
 Light flickered on bits of ruby glass and on sensitive
capillary hairs in the nylon-brushed nostrils of the
creature that quivered gently, its eight legs spidered
under it on rubber padded paws.
The Mechanical Hunter
 “What does the Hound think about
down there nights. Is it coming alive
on us, really? It makes me cold.”
 “It doesn’t think about anything we
don’t want it to think.”
 “That’s sad,” said Montag, “because all
we put in it is hunting and finding and
killing. What a shame if that’s all it can
ever know.”
-- Fahrenheit 451, 1953
the first electric firecontrol system
The
beginning
of goalseeking
machine
behavior
(1941)
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AjWgYfn00mI
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TkZnmX3jyro
Norbert Weiner, 1894 – 1964
Founder of Cybernetics
Cybernetics or the Control and
Communication in the Animal
and the Machine (1948).
Norbert Wiener
Acclaimed one of the "seminal
books . . . comparable in ultimate
importance to . . . Galileo or
Malthus or Rousseau or Mill",
Cybernetics was judged by twentyseven historians, economists,
educators, and philosophers to be
one of those books published during
the "past four decades," which may
have a substantial impact on public
thought and action in the years
ahead." -- Saturday Review
Cybernetics Is…
 Math/Science of systems that have
goals
 Using circular “feedback” loops of
 sensingcomparing with goalsaction 
sensing …
 Communication systems, control theory
 Applied to Animals, Machines, Business,
Government…anything that processes
information
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=46FswYw-m6o&feature=related
Is the Mechanical Hound a
Cybernetic Hound?
 Nights when things got dull, which was
every night, the men slid down the brass
poles, and set the ticking combinations of
the olfactory system of the hound and let
loose rats in the fire house areaway. Three
seconds later the game was done, the rat
caught half across the areaway, gripped in
gentle paws while a four-inch hollow steel
needle plunged down from the proboscis of
the hound to inject massive jolts of
morphine or procaine.
After the War…
 Scientists/Engineers seek funding to apply
wartime cybernetic techniques to broader
problems
 Ideas developed for military use describe:
 Living organisms
 Control and communication devices
 Human society
 In terms of:
 Information, feedback, control
Other Developments in Robotics
1950
Alan Turing publishes
Computing Machinery and
Intelligence in which he
proposes a test to determine
whether or not a machine has
gained the power to think for
itself. It becomes known as the
"Turing Test".
1951
The Day the Earth Stood Still
premieres in theaters. The
movie features an alien named
Klaatu and his robot Gort.
Was this Bradbury’s Inspiration?
 Gray Walter’s Tortoise
(1948-1953)
 Even organisms with
extremely simple
nervous systems could
show complex and
unexpected behavior
 Steering motor on front
wheel and driving on
rear wheels
 Two vacuum tubes for
control
 One photocell
 One bump sensor
Surviving Technology –
the irresistible allure
 Fahrenheit 451 as a critique of cybernetics
 Humans subject to “control” thru media
 No books = no independent thought
 Mildred’s case:
 “It doesn’t think about anything we don’t want
it to think.”
 The ideal consumer—a mechanical human?
 Clarisse: “I rarely watch the parlor walls,
So I’ve lot’s of time for crazy thoughts.”
An unexpected
bounty
 As technology gets
cheaper, the
development of it gets
more democratic
 Technology as
liberator
Start
concocting
your
Mechanical
Hound here
Robotics at MPC:
 Take ENGR 50 this Fall!
 12 Fridays, 4 – 6:15 pm
 No pre-requisites
 Sign up sheet for notification
Underwater Robotics?
MAST 205 ROV Design and Competition
 Spring ’09! Join MPC’s yearly team
entry into a national Underwater ROV
competition
The Mechanical Hound Today
 Military funding Big Dog as robotic
pack mule for army
 NASA developing E-nose for detecting
poisonous gases on Space Station
 Dr. Amy Ryan, JPL 
 So far, all books have not
been banned 
References
1. Fire Control & Human-Computer
Interaction

http://www-sul.stanford.edu/siliconbase/wip/control.html
2. Cybernetics and New Cybernetics:
 http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cybernetics
 http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/New_Cybernetics
3. History of Soviet Cybernetics:

http://books.google.com/books?id=QirR7QYPFZQC&pg=PA54&lpg=PA54&dq=cybernetic
4. The Essential Message: Claude Shannon
and the Making of Information Theory

http://dspace.mit.edu/bitstream/1721.1/39429/1/54526133.pdf