Achivist Paul Guinan Explains how Victorian Robot Boilerplate Helped to Win the First World War

“Boilerplate was invented by Professor Archibald Campion in 1893. Some of Campion’s family members had been killed in combat, so he built this mechanical soldier in an attempt to save other people’s lives.

Lots of people thought that it was a hoax because there was no television, so most of the general public never had a chance to see Boilerplate in person – they just read accounts of his adventures in the newspapers. There was an initial celebrity to Boilerplate at the time but people regarded it as a kind of sideshow thing. Campion took him around the world to demonstrate his practicality and how it could be applied, but people didn’t take it seriously, and in many cases they thought there was a fellow inside who was operating him.

However, Campion convinced President Roosevelt to try out Boilerplate on the field and he joined the Spanish-American war. He subsequently showed up in a few international conflicts but didn’t join the frontline until WWI, where he participated in infantry charges.

Initially, the soldiers regarded him as a mascot character who broke up the monotony of trench life and amused the troops. He was almost regarded as a kind of second-class citizen, amusing, practical, but ultimately unnecessary. But once they saw that he was capable of fighting with them in battle, they began to respect him. He could be described as the first Terminator – nothing could penetrate him. Bullets would bounce off him and he would continue to come at you.

The irony is that despite his little burst of popularity, today people have forgotten about him. For a lot of people, the other great technologies that were happening at the time were more impressive – creating a machine that can sail a man through the air is certainly more dramatic than creating an anthropomorphic creature that can fire a gun. It was one of the first technologies to replace a human, and that caused a lot of anxieties. After the war they dismissed him completely.

The claim that Campion created a hoax could very well be true. However, certain photographs like this one from the Battle of the Marne show Boilerplate in independent action, you don’t see a wire or a log attached to somebody else. And if there were some kind of midget inside his torso operating him, that man deserves a raise! The attitude photographs don’t lie is becoming less and less valid, but there are enough photographs of Boilerplate to show that some kind of construct was built. As far as his abilities go, that’s a different subject. History may never resolve it. It may be one of those great enigmas that will be kept a mystery.”

© Tim Noakes 2009

Boilerplate: History’s Mechanical Marvel by Paul Guinan and Anina Bennett is published by Abrams