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In Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D. season 7, the team

goes back in time to 1931 in the first episode and meets Ernest Koenig, the ancestor of the Koenigs in the present-day timeline.

During the second episode, the team brings Koenig to the Zephyr, and un-blindfolds him, showing him the interior. He begins to freak out about the fact that he's on a "rocket ship". Then he sees Enoch, whose skin is torn on his skull, revealing his robotic head. Koenig then remarks:

KOENIG: This is one of those, uh, electric men, oh, oh, I know, a robot! Is that a robot?
ENOCH: I am not a robot. I am a Chronicom. If you'll excuse me, I must go fix my face.

Now, the episode is set in

the 1930s,

and it baffles me as to how Koenig knew the term. From what I can recall, the word "robot" wasn't used until the 40s or later (although I could be wrong on that), but even if the term was invented around then, it wouldn't have been used in a widespread manner (especially in America, since the term comes from the Czech language). Was Koenig's use of the term "robot" historically accurate for 1930s America?

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    Worth noting that the NYT archive shows 29 results for "robot" up to the beginning of 1934, almost of all which occur in general audience articles to refer to electronic machines. It seems like the shift from R. U. R. to the modern day usage was remarkably quick, as such usage is evident as early as 1927.
    – Hyperdrive Enthusiast
    Commented Jul 31, 2022 at 23:04

2 Answers 2

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The play "R. U. R." (Rossum's Universal Robots) was translated to English in 1922, and performed in the the U.S. in several major cities in the 1920s introducing the word "robot" to the language. The concept of robots as metal automata was popular in pulp SF even early in the 1930s. From the SF Encyclopedia article

Early Pulp-magazine stories about robots are generally ambivalent. David H Keller's "The Psychophonic Nurse" (November 1928 Amazing) is a cooperative servant, but no substitute for a mother's love. Abner J Gelula's "Automaton" (November 1931 Amazing) has lecherous designs on its creator's daughter and has to be destroyed.

Koenig was interested in technology - there's plenty of reason to expect he'd be very familiar with the idea of robots and the word 'robot', even in 1931.

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    +1 glad this answer's here. As a nuanced point on R.U.R. (having re-read it in the last week), the robots there aren't "electric men", they're synthetic organisms, who can regularly be mistaken for normal people. Nonetheless, that title did invent the word "robot" -- R.U.R. standing for "Rossum's Universal Robots".
    – Daniel R. Collins
    Commented Jul 31, 2022 at 19:15
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    Edited my answer to include what RUR stands for. Thanks l.
    – Andrew
    Commented Jul 31, 2022 at 20:50
  • Apparently, by 1928 the word "robot" was already associated with humanoid machines (i.e. "electric men"). It is interesting that neither of the short stories from the quote refer to the machines as "robots", but 1934 sequel to the "Automaton" does.
    – Danila Smirnov
    Commented Aug 1, 2022 at 7:39
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    Also there was a famous 1927 German sci-fi movie (Metropolis) with a robot as one of the main villains youtube.com/watch?v=ouOFqFGpTto It even had an outer skin to be able to masquerade as human, but was completely metallic on the inside.
    – vsz
    Commented Aug 1, 2022 at 12:53
  • The concept of robots would be well known to anyone with an interest in science and engineering in the 19th century and early 20th century - the Mechanical Turk was created in the 18th century after all. The only thing new is the word "robot". Before that word became popular robots were known for over a hundred years as "automatons".
    – slebetman
    Commented Aug 1, 2022 at 22:06
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While it certainly wasn't used as much in 1931 as it was later in time, it was around and it's not implausible that Koenig could have known about it, and even likely given the character's interest in technology:

Image shows Google ngram of use of the word robot, showing that it was in use in 1930 but at lower level than the 1990

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