What a lot of missiles, from one little robot. I'll show the missiles here on the table,
look at that lot here, it's all fallen down out of it. One, two, three, four, five, six,
seven, eight, nine, ten, there's probably one more stuck in the thing at the top.
This is a wonderful robot which I picked up in 1981, and when I looked at it a few weeks ago,
I found big rust spots inside which stopped the thing from working properly. So that's why
I hadn't used it for a long, long time. This is a plug I put in, which is a bit of a pain actually,
let's see if there's any left - no I think it's all clear now. So there's a column goes
down there, and this little stack, which I'll put back in again, before I show the other functions;
just fits inside it, and it's now got two different functions, two different motors.
One motor does the walking, and this one here - there we are, a little stack of them -
I'm ready for the go, and I'll put the plug, oh there's one more back here I didn't spot,
I thought there was; I think there's also one more inside, when I assembled it I rattled it,
and I heard a noise and thought, oh yes I'll get it out sometime. So it's a wonderful robot,
and it has some two main functions. This is one I've shown, which I'll do again; this is the one
that makes it move forward; well, it lights up first of all. I'll hold it up to show the lights;
those little things lighting up inside, and flickering too, slightly. The flickering is
being produced by the fact that there's little reed switches just touching onto a spindle that's
turning around. This is 1981, well before we had the electronics doing it by chips and things,
microchips. It's done mechanically, a little flickering effect from lights. Extraordinary.
And then it moves around on the table. Let's see if I can get it to move around.
It should actually stop from falling off the table without breaking the mechanism; it's got one of
these very strange - let me just turn it off a sec[ond] - it's got that very strange revolving
piece here, which is fairly common actually with some of the mechanical toys from 50 years ago,
which when it reaches the edge of the table makes the thing back away, or turn around, so it doesn't
fall off the table. It's very odd, rather than having just two wheels rotating around, it does
this extra thing on a turntable. So here he goes again, push this one here, and he'll happily
move around. The legs don't do much in the way of actually moving forward;
they're fairly loose but they don't do a waddling action, which is a shame, because
that's what robots should do. But the arms you can swing, the arms again they don't swing themselves,
the kid's got to swing the arm like that, and make it do a bit of that, and wave at you. It's
a bit of fun, so a child can get involved with it. It's going both ways, every way, [every] which way
So the control for that is this antennae here, that's him off. Incidentally there's two lots
of batteries here, which is very interesting. Look at the back of the thing, there's a place
there for two double A batteries, which is what governs the little gun that shoots out of its
mouth. But there's also two C batteries here, which makes the thing move along, move around,
it makes the the motor go, at the bottom. So here we go, we'll have one more go with this one; I can
do them both together if you like, I'll do that one on and at the same time I'll make him shoot.
They're shooting out aren't they, whooof, and more, and some more, and some more, and some more,
I'll turn that bit off, but no... it's more fun to have his eyes lit up, isn't it!
A little bit of shaking, to see if he's got any left, I don't think he has, I'll just
check that [there's] not any left in the back, no I think it's all gone, so I've got to refill,
do it again. It's a lot of fun, something like that, for children to do, and I'm really slightly
ashamed that I left it unloved and uncared for, for so long, because it needed that careful
dismantling and cleaning all the rust parts to make it work properly. It's now up and running!