This is an extremely rare ROBOT built by the founder of Atari, Nolan Bushnell. Its name is BOB, which stands for Brains on Board. There was only 120 built. It was programmable by my Apple ][ (Apple II), which came out in June, 1977.

I did this gorilla marketing at home to show venture (vulture) capitalists. There is a 1958 Royal vacuum cleaner , 18 years before iRobot's Roomba in 2002. 

Also it shows him answering th $150 AT&T Micky Mouse phone BUT it didn't have voice recognition. To the right, not completely visible on the floor, is a state of the art Panasonic answering machine, which really answered the phone.

My dad's ad in Popular Science, the October 1946 issue (Page 279).  He was an inventor of one of the greatest crystal set radios.

Control Data Corporation (CDC) 6600 supercomputer purchased in 1971. I used the BASIC (Beginners All-purpose Symbolic Instruction Code) language. In June, 1978 I took took the BASIC source code for the artificially intelligent (AI) ELIZA program and customized it. ( ELIZA: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ELIZA)

Digital Equipment Corporation (DEC) PDP 11 series minicomputer, in real-time control in the steel industry. PDP means Programmed Data Processor.

DEC System 10 also known as the DEC PD 10 was considered a mainframe from 1966 - 1983

Apple Computer Inc.'s Apple [] also known as the Apple II from June 1977

THIS is what got me seriously thinking about nsvigation in 1982. I would drive all over America and I wanted to know the mileage on physical printed maps. It was made in West Germany. It is called an ALVIN Opisometer.

Front cover of Article from Computer & Electronics Marketing  in November, 1983, Vol. 3, No. 11.

I was actually 21-years-old not 24 as the article states.

Fetch the Paper, RB5X

"The ingredients are

there for a major

breakthrough in home 

robots . . . if only a 

mass market could be

created so that unit 

costs made sense."

says Ron Seman

24-year-old president 

of a robotics company, who hopes to be the Steve

Wozniak of home robots.

Article from Computer & Electronics Marketing  in November, 1983, Vol. 3, No. 11., Page 32

I was actually 21-years-old not 24 as the article states.

The company was based in Whiting, IN and not Evanston, Ill.

Robots for home, an Elusive, Explosive Market

  Ron Seman wants a piece of the action. The 24-year-old president of Personal Touch, a robotics research and development company based in Evanston, IL, is highly optimistic about the future of robotics. He plans to make a splash at the next Consumer Electronics Show, hoping to attract additional venture capital there. His interest is the home market, where he sees big possibilities for robots that are entertaining, capable as acting as a babysitter (when the parent leaves the room for a moment.), and equipped as mobile smoke detectors and burglar alarms.

  Says Seman, "All the ingredients are there for a major breakthrough in home robots . . . if only a mass market could be created so that unit costs made sense. There have been big advances in computing, big advances in sensory gear, control mechanisms, voice activation. What is needed is someone with enough carisma to get the ball rolling." Seman's goal is clear. He wants to be the Steve Wozniak of robotics.

  "Steve Wozniak managed to scrape together enough money to get one working model of the original Apple, and he impressed people enough to order a thousand. Then he borrowed enough  money on the basis of that purchase order to produce the initial thousand. The rest is history."

  As Seman sees it, "The personal computer market was created in one fell swoop. Before that, the only personal computer users were the real hackers, ham-radio operators, people who were used to building things from kits. Then along came Apple. Some of it was luck, some of it timing. I was hoping Nolan Bushnell would create more of a stir with is robots, because of his reputation as the founder of Atari. I thought maybe he could pull it off. Now, I just might have to do it myself," Seman laughs. 

__________

'Steve Wozniak managed to scrape together enough money to get one working model of the original Apple, and he impressed people enough to order a thousand . . . The rest is history.'-- Ron Seman, Personal Touch

__________

Article from Computer & Electronics Marketing  in November, 1983, Vol. 3, No. 11., Page 33.

  Personal Touch's Seman, for one, thinks that the technology for developing more sophisticated robots aimed at the general consumer market exists today.

__________

'All the ingredients are there for a major breakthrough in home robots . . . if only a mass market could be created so that unit costs made sense.' --Ron Seman, Personal Touch 

__________

  He also believes that the market demand would be there if consumers were offered a high value product at a reasonable price. "I think there would be a big market for a security feature in a robot. A robot could be programmed to travel a particular path-- say around the house and through a path and back. The robot could be equipped with a Polaroid ultrasonic ranging system-- they're available for $50. Any intruder that cut across the path of the system would set off an alarm. Similarly a mobile robot could be programmed for fire protection. for gas or microwave leaks, for turning appliances on or off. Robots could be programmed to diagnose whats wrong with your car. They could play chess or video games." 

  In the future we'll certainly see super user friendly robots programmed through new artificial intelligence techniques, able to plow fields with a precision no human could attain, help with common household chores, and act as permanent aids to the handicapped. The only uncertainty is where the breakthrough will come. 

 As Seman insists, "All the field needs is one strong push."

Here is is the front cover of an Apple focused magazine, A+, Volume 2, Issue 4, April, 1984.

In the bottom left you will see the title of the article, THE ROBOTS ARE COMING, about ROBOTS and I and my company Personal Touch, Inc. 

  Ron Seman is a man in his twenties who has formed a company called Personal Touch. He describes it as an assocaition of about 100 people-- scientists, technicians, engineers, computer specialists, and marketing people-- all dedicated to making a great breakthrough in personal home robots. Seman will talk robotics to you 24 hours a day. We asked him to elaborate on the field and its future.

  Robotics is still in a primitive stage todat according to Seman. He says that many elements of the necessary technlogy are around, but no one has yet put the pieces together. "There are companies making Heavendway in robotic vision systems, dedicated arms are getting better, we're seeing superior software and faster processors coming out . . . but all the pieces just haven't fallen into place because nobody has created a demand, a markert for home robots."

Says Seman, "I anticpate major jumps in computer power within the next five years. A lot of personal computers have 16-bit memories [processors] as their basic information chunk now. That will soon jump to 32 bits, and then 256 bits. Setup several of these coprocessor working in parralel, and you get a lot more computing power. Speech synthesizers, for instance, can now recognize 2000 words in a sophisticated system."

This is the Androbot right before I used it for more guerrilla marketing to help with the World Class FIRST Car. You can see a toy robot arm on the ground holding a paint brush.  On the table is an Apple ][ (Apple II) which controlled wirelessly the Androbot. In the middle is THE Apple Macintosh 128k used in the car. 

To the right is a VCR used to play videos of the artist Manuel Ruiz, whose gallery I am in. He was across the street on Michigan Ave across from the art gallery. He had a weekly TV show and each week he would do show how to paint like another famous artist.

I had my car parked near the front of his two floor gallery, the largest one in Chicago. I had my Apple II running off a power system I had installed in my car, to power all kind of technology.  I had the Androbot on the sidewalk interacting with the public with a two-way radio, without anyone knowing I was the brains behind the voice. I did it for an hour or two. 

Manuel came out. He politely asked what I was doing. I said I know you are a very famous artist that teaches how one can imitate the great masters. I said I have an artist and it is impossible for you or anyone in the world to copy this style at this moment (and it never has been done since). He proudly said, "I doubt that." 

I said I have programmed this ROBOT to do something no human can authentically do. "What is that?" he asked. I said we could spread out a large canvas on the floor and some containers of various colors. The ROBOT can randomly generate a number and pick a brush size then randomly pick a color then randomly pick a direction whether it is straight left, right, curved or totally a random combination. Then it can pick a random time wait to start painting from a fraction of a second to any length of time you want such as hours or longer. Then it can do a random amount of pressure. Then it can do a "ballet" of sorts to musically it randomly selects and plays. EACH painting will be unique as time. It can randomly pause any amount of time for emphasis. It can be done in a private location and tickets sold or let people watch for free. It can be done inside, outside as street art, or in a theater. It can do it very fast as well and much faster than a mere human? "Are you interested?" I asked.

The Androbot stripped apart to start a transition into Yoda. You can see and an electric motor so the his head can go up down.  Also there are green LED lights for eyes. 

Apple.

Think Different.

The premier issue of MACWORLD magazine in 1984. This is Steve Jobs standing in front of three identical Apple Macintosh 128k models.

The World Class First Car in front of UL (Underwriters Laboratories). Guerrilla marketing was the plan. This is to imply that UL had to inspect the car because there were so many 120 V circuits and batteries and inverters. 

I just brought home the Apple computers. I wore out the t-shirt! 

Behind is a one of a kind sound system, one of the most realistic in the world. At the time JBL factory built speakers were used in 8 out of 10 professional recording studios. That meant all the top orchestras and bands were mastered on JBL. 

I didn't cut corporate corners and designed these speaker systems without any constraints, in high school using JBL components, but that is another story. (I reported to JBL that they had errors in their design specs and they sent me a very expensive woofer for free.)  

On the left is THE Apple Macintosh with 128k of memory. To the right is the Apple Lisa needed to develop software for the Macintosh.  On top of the Lisa is a hard disk which only 5 MB of space! Many simple photos taken today on an iPhone 14 Max Pro take over 5 MB of space! In P

Probably caught dozing off as all the implementation was done around the clock as much as humanly possible from after 1/24/1984, when the Macintosh was announced, until the Byte Computer Show in May of 1984. There about 70,000 original Macintosh's made. Over the life of the Apple Lisa some have said only 10,000 were sold. But that technology was used in the Macintosh. In comparison there are over 1,500,000,000 various model iPhones in use in 2023.

Here I am at Mt. Baldy of the Indiana Dunes National Park, my future base for IndianaDunesHiking.Com  

Here I am with a GRiD Compass laptop. It was a hardened laptop with a magnesium alloy body weighing in at 11 pounds! It was usde by our Special Forces paratroopers and by astronauts on NASA's Space Shuttle. It could be dropped from waist height onto a concrete floor AND keep running. It had an Intel 8086 processor with a propretary I demonstrated it at the Byte Computer Show with my World Class First Car. I dropped it about 14 times a day, when I had a crowd at the booth, and then it ceased to power on. .   It cost $10,500 which would cost $30,827.13 in 2023 considering inflation (see BLS.GFov/data/inflation_calculator).

Of course I chose the revolutionary Apple Macintosh 128k designed and built by what was then called Apple Computer, Inc. (changed to Apple, Inc. on 1/9/2007). It too had its roots from Xerox's Palo Alto research center where they had designed the geraphical interface that had WYSIWYG

I had dreamt  buying this mansion on Lake Front Drive in Beverly Shores, which was extremely close to the Indiana Dunes National Park and Indiana Dunes State Park.

This is a current photo of a BMW 733i that was for sale. This is exactly what one looked like in 1984 that I was pursuing. I wanted this to be the platform for the World Class First Car in 1984 but the Chicago area dealers couldn't grasp what I was telling them, when I said a computerized navigation system (all the way back in 1984). I accessed SilverstoneMotorcars.com for fair use educational purposes on 3/3/23.

So without any dealers of used or nrw cars who wanted to get involved I just used this car I owned for this project,  my 1983 Chevrolet Cavalier, which started at a base price of $6,251 ($18,352 in 2023 dollars). I took all the branding off of the Chevrolet. They had built 45,200 of them and this was the one of kind one, after I used to computerize it.

The house originally built in 1890 for Standard Oil of Indiana workers, where World Class First Car was invented ending in May, 1984.

1509 Ohio Avenue, Whiting, Indiana 46394 USA

(Google Map location:  https://goo.gl/maps/8kMJB27foG2DNe7F8) Just 2,000 feet from the now BP

The front of my World Class First (First Insanely Radical Savage Tech) Car with ultrasonic ranging for automatically putting on anti-lock brakes or adjusting the cruise control speed, to allow for "road trains" of cars all going at the same speed to improve fuel economy on busy highways and to prevent the insane amount of STOP and GO traffic and rubberneckers (looking at acciudents and other interesting stuff on the side of the road.) On the rear of the car was an identical set of items. Notice the LARGE lens for quality. No need for tiny wimpy lens. The purpose was to record the main thorough fares I had put into my Chicago street vuideo database.

One of the favorite photos of the World Class First Car. It shows a full size waater proof keyboard, a 9" Apple Macintosh monitor in the dash, and a Sony Watchman in the shifter console.

A Sony Watchman was installed into this console for use for different things, I Installed a Page Alert Sunsentry which will send a radio page to their pager you wear. There are different triggers for setting off the silent alarm. One day in the Grant Park Garage a contractor drop off a very large compressor for sandblasting. When it turned on the sound qand vibration set the alarm off and I ran to check on the car and peaked around a wall and saw the compressor running.

Here I am at thew McCormick Place in Chicago. This is truly the first Apple car I designed, also known as the World  Class First Car. One can see an Apple Macintosh monitor, keyboard, and mother board. In edition there are paper based items which were no longer needed like atlases, maps, tour books, ... Note the Statue of Libery. This system now gives one FREEDOM to go where they want without their navigator or stopping strangers to get wrong or confusing directions.

Here is the World Class First Car of mine that I designed in Whiting, Indiana on display at the Byte Computer Show  at the McCormick Place on the lakefront in Chicago, Illinois, USA in May, 1984. In the middle of the photo you will notice a "Yoda" ROBOT i built by modifying a very rare Androbot built by Nolan Bushnell, founder of Arti, the video game company and later founder of Chuck E. Cheese Pizza chain located in 16 countries. On the left side of the table is the GriD Compass hardened laptop.

This is the Chicago Tribune newspaper on May 15, 1984. This is Section 2. The title of the article, Video arcades take back seat to this show by Glen Elsasser, appears below on that page.

This is the Chicago Tribune newspaper on May 15, 1984. The title of the article, Video arcades take back seat to this show by Glen Elsasser. It got its title because at the arcade there were some top of the line very expensive arcade only premier video games that used actual video and not just simple computer graphics. They were called full-motion video games or FMV games. They also stored video on LaserDiscs.  I used a Pioneer LaserDisc. controlled by an RS 232 port connected to the Macintosh. 

I modified the rear seat and attached velcro to the back of the seat and the metal backrest behind it. When I tapped the brakes a little hard while driving  the seat would have momentum and the velcro would give way and the seat would fall forward exposing something. What was there? A color 21" Panasonic TV mounted facing forward. I could use it for entertainment OR I could display textual instructions and display them backwards. Then when one would look in the rearview mirror, one would see the text correctly, like the backwards word AMBULANCE on an actual ambulance so that you know what is behind you. Seems like the sirens and flashing lights would give you a good idea! Some states didn't allow a "TV" to be in the front to distract a driver. 

Here is the wording from the article if you are not able to zoom in or save the photo on your device and the zoom in from photos:

____________

   THEY PASS A display of greeting cards with computer themes -- "Your data needs no translation" and then head for the computerized car that will tell you everything from the best route to your destination to whether you are tailgating. 

  "We've videotaped streets of Chicago and put it on laser discs, and we'll show you how  to get from here to there," says Ronald Seman, president of World Class Inc. of Whiting, Ind., which has computerized the car.

  Manny is impressed. "They have that on video games," he says.

Researching at the Harold Washington Library Center in Chicago. I went to view microfiche to see the article.

I found the article on microfiche! It just wasn't a dream.

The whole engine had to be scrapped.  The Chevrolet engine management computer advanced the timing and the engine began to ping and a holw wqs  burned through the engine and caused a catastrophic engine failure. 

After working with Chevrolet of General Motors they agreed to give me 1/2 the cost of the engine I wqs able to find. The engine heads are from the blown up engine and the car has the new to me used engine. 

In 1985 the World Class FIRST Car was stolen in Chicago just north of State Street. It was never recovered. I got the value from the insurance company of about $4,000. The stuff (computers and electronics)  in the car was worth ten times that in actual value. The car was priceless.

An Apple bumper sticker: 

I'd rather be driving a Macintosh.

I don't know if this bumper sticker from Apple Computer was inspired at all by Apple Fellow, Guy Kawasaki, who offered to provide me a truckload of Apple Mancintosh's to install in rental cars in Chicago's O'hare Airport, the busiest in the world at that time. I would certainly like to think so but there were many kinds of bumper stickers like that. Guy Kawasaki had on his business card the title of Apple Evangelist, as he was the chief marketer of the ORIGINAL Apple Macintosh in 1984. I met him twice. Once was at a marketing event to software developers in Chicago and the second time was in Apple's office in downtown Chicago 

Bumper sticker is from: https://www.computerhistory.org/collections/catalog/102667347

1909 Jones Live Map which used a disk for each route. It was connected to the speedometer/odometer and the disk would rotate so you knew about when to turn.  On the bottom right was New York to Philadelphia. Gas stop planning was crucial at that time.

1932 there was an interesting system. The box had a paper map. It was connected to the speedometer/odomoter cable. So based on the rotation of the cable it gve one a rought idea where it was on the route. Did I go 10 miles or 15 miles?

1986 for a brief time I worked with Cell Analysis Systems in Chicago, a startup to develop a desktop soultion to replace this system. The new system would look at blood cells and alert pathologists to make sure they check this or that sample for cancerous images. It was a supplement to the doctors and not a replacement. It eventually was bought by Becton Dickinson, one of the largest global medical technology companies in the world manufacture (BD.Com <- one of the shortest website names!)

1987 I studied a lot about Indy Car and Formula One. I had some ideas about how techology could be used to make cars faster, beter handling, and safer. I thought I could experiment on my own platforms mentioned below in 1988. 

1989 I designed this parallel tandem for riding on the ice of Wolf Lake in Hammond, IN. The two wood braces keeps the upper part of the bicycle from leaning into each ohter and between the reat axles there is a steel brace keeping the bicycles at equal distance. So two people could ride the bicycles OR one person can ride it and in either case it won't slip out from under you in snow or ice.