a remotely operated body, arm, etc., used variously to extend the user’s natural abilities, perform work in an inhospitable environment or at a distance, etc.
[coined by Robert A. Heinlein (writing as ‘Anson MacDonald’) in his 1942 story about the inventor of such a device]
Even the…humanoid gadgets known universally as ‘waldoes’…passed through several generations of development…in Waldo’s machine shop before he redesigned them for mass production. The first of them…had been designed to enable Waldo to operate a metal lathe.
We make a good team on the waldoes.
The bathyscaphs are both equipped with remote manipulators—the experts call them ‘Waldos’ —for working under the extreme pressure.
One of them hit the guy too hard with the waldo-enhanced arm of his riot suit.
I was working late in the loft one night, shaving down a chip, my arm off and the little waldo jacked straight into the stump.
She…used the waldo to send the offending sample back through cryogenics.
I thought, my waldo has come. I got my Hugo, and now I've go my waldo. It’s like a great honor.
The semi-robotic machine stood ten feet high and moved on two backward-jointed waldo legs.
Scavenger Ruby Kubick and her faithful waldo, Golem, don’t quite manage to save the life of a stranded zillionaire philanthropist VIP.
‘We're like dwarves in a waldo’, Frank said to him angrily. ‘One of those really big waldo excavators. We're inside it and supposed to be moving a mountain, and instead of using the waldo capabilities we're leaning out of a window and digging with teaspoons.
The forensics lab, however, was new. It was a wide room with a high ceiling and movable partitions that could seal off a section and keep its atmosphere separate. Fume hoods with waldoes and blast-resistant glass lined one wall. The tables that filled the center of the room had aisles between them wide enough for specialized tool carts—chemical, biological, electronic, computational—to be wheeled to wherever they were needed.
antedating 1942
Robert A. Heinlein, 'Waldo'
Last modified 2021-02-04 19:35:36
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entries, HDSF has drawn extensively on corresponding entries
in OED.