“All right, Mother. I’ll do it. But I’ll need Sandy’s and Phyl’s help.”
“Wonderful!” the two girls cried. “When do we start?”
“Come down to the lab at three tomorrow afternoon. We’ll have the robot ready by then.”
All day and the next morning Tom, Bud, and three engineers worked to perfect a portable control panel, inserting tapes to send messages to a six-foot-tall robot so that he could walk, dance, and sing. Record after record was tried and discarded before the mechanical man’s steps synchronized with the music.
In the meantime, Arvid Hanson had been working on the head to make it look more presentable to an audience. By the time Sandy and Phyl arrived, the robot appeared as a deadpan, comical-faced creature whose eyes roved from side to side.
“Meet Herbert,” Tom said. As the girls giggled, the robot bowed stiffly. “I’ll give you a demonstration,” the young inventor went on, “then show you just how to work these dials. It’s as simple as running a record player.”
Herbert went through his performance perfectly, A MECHANICAL COMEDIAN 63
to the delight of the girls, then both worked the dials, doing a satisfactory job.
The four young people had an early supper at the Enterprises plant and at six thirty left for the armory where the entertainment was to take place.
By eight o’clock the auditorium was filled and the show began. Since the robot performance was to be the last number, Tom and Bud remained behind the scenes, carefully guarding the canvas-covered figure and the control panel until the curtain rang down on the preceding act.