Eric was Britain’s first robot, demonstrated at an exhibition in London in 1928.
Captain William H. Richards and engineer Alan Reffell built Eric for the 1928 annual exhibition of the Society of Model Engineers. The machine could stand, move its arms, bow, and deliver a speech through a radio connection. Its demonstrations attracted large crowds and made it an early public example of a machine designed to resemble a person.
Eric was operated rather than fully autonomous. Electrical control equipment and an operator supplied much of the robot’s behavior, so it should not be confused with later autonomous humanoids. Its historical importance comes from its public demonstrations and mechanical imitation of human posture and gestures.
The robot was later taken on a tour of the United States. A reconstruction of Eric was created by the Science Museum in London and displayed many decades after the original machine disappeared.