Karel Čapek
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Karel Čapek was a Czech writer whose 1920 play R.U.R. introduced the word robot to the world. It comes from a Czech word for forced labour.
Karel Čapek was a Czech writer whose 1920 play R.U.R. introduced the word robot to the world. It comes from a Czech word for forced labour.
Karel Čapek (1890 to 1938) was a Czech writer. His 1920 play R.U.R. (Rossum's Universal Robots) is where the word "robot" first reached a wide audience.
Where the word comes from
"Robot" comes from the Czech word robota, meaning forced labour. Čapek credited his brother, the artist Josef Čapek, with suggesting the word.
The play
In R.U.R., artificial workers are made in a factory. They are not metal machines but biological, humanlike beings. The story asks what happens when workers are treated as objects, and it ends badly for the humans.
Why it matters
The word started in fiction, not in a lab. Writers like Čapek and Isaac Asimov shaped how the public imagines robots, which still affects how we talk about them today.
Ask R2 Co-pilot anything you didn't understand about Karel Čapek. It'll explain it plainly.
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Last updated · 2026-11-06
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