First story to describe a cyborg?

[Orrex]

This info is probably freely available via Wiki or Google, but that's no fun. What's the earliest story to describe a cyborg, a synthesis of human and machine?

For the sake of the discussion, let's avoid those postmodern interpretation that include any human who even touches a machine. Let's also omit such mundance "cyborg" contrivances as eyeglasses and hearing aids. Finally, let's not use any robots or androids as examples; even though the Maschinenmensch from Metropolis looks like a woman, I don't believe that it was living or organic.

Any guesses? Last week I happened to read Lovecraft's 1930 work The Whisperer in Darkness, and a basic cyborg is described there. Specifically, brains are surgically removed and implanted into devices that allow sensory and even mechanical interaction with the outside world.


I'd be interested to hear of any earlier examples you can name. There are probably many that are unknown to me!

[YankeyMCC]

1. Scanners in Live Vain

by Cordwainer Smith

Maybe? It's the earliest example I can think of.

[TechBear_Seattle]

2. "The Ablest Man in the World," Edward Page Mitchell, 1879

From the Wikipedia article for The Ablest Man in the World:

Dr. Fisher is spending his July holiday in Baden. While he is there, Baron Savitch, a rising Russian politician, is said to be ill by one of the hotel staff. Fisher is led into the baron’s room where he finds the baron ill and shaking. Fisher notices that the baron’s head is somewhat peculiar. The baron’s head has a black silk skullcap which Fisher removes and finds the top of the baron’s head to be a silver dome. The baron tells him to unscrew it but before he can, Dr. Rapperschwyll, the baron's doctor, comes in and tells Fisher to get out.

There is a lot of controversy surrounding Savitch, mostly concerning his humble beginnings to his rise in the Tsar's court after graduating from the University of Dorpat. Wanting to know more, Fisher confronts Rapperschwyll at an old observation tower when the ladder falls and they find themselves trapped up there for hours. Rapperschwyll, after swearing Fisher to secrecy, tells him the story of Baron Savitch.

Baron Savitch grew up in a mental asylum and was mute and retarded. Rapperschwyll found him there one day and with his skill in medicine and watch making he made a clockwork brain for Savitch similar to Charles Babbage's difference engine. With this mechanical brain, Baron Savitch cannot make a mistake and with time will rise to become the next Napoleon.

Later in Paris, Fisher finds Baron Savitch on a diplomatic mission. He learns Savitch will soon marry and is disgusted by the idea of a women being married to a machine. He finds that Rapperschwyll has returned to his native Switzerland, visiting his dying mother. With this knowledge, Fisher waits for the baron to feel ill again. Once that has happened Fisher comes to his aid as a doctor. With the baron's guard down, Fisher takes his brain, runs off with it and later throws it into the Atlantic ocean on his return trip to America.

Originally published unattributed in the NY Sun May 4 1879. Reprinted in The Crystal Man: Stories by Edward Page Mitchell, Sam Moskowitz, ed. Garden City, NY: Doubleday, 1973.

Arguably, Nick Chopper (aka The Tin Woodsman) from Frank Baum's Oz books can also be classed as a cyborg; The Wonderful Wizard of Oz was published in 1900.

[Orrex]

3. That's awesome!

Now... Did you know that yourself, or did you cheat and Wiki/Google it? :evilgrin:
Here's a link to a 11-page pdf of http://www.horrormasters.com/Text/a2218.pdf">The Ablest Man in the World, by the way.


I've never read the Oz books, but the Tin Woodsman crossed my mind as a possibility.

[TechBear_Seattle]

4. I remembered Mitchell and the story, but I had to look up the title

Mitchell is rather like Philip K. Dick: he wrote great stories and influenced other great writers, but never got the acclaim he deserved. He may have inspired fellow American writer H. G. Wells, as his stories about an invisible man (The Crystal Man) and time travel (The Clock that Went Backward) both predate Wells' The Invisible Man and The Time Machine by several years, and it is very likely that Wells had knowledge of these books.

[phantom power]

5. Wow. I'll take "Encyclopaedic Knowledge of SF" for 1600 Alex.