This article is about the robot. For the string reverse of robot, see Tobor (etymology). For the portfolio, see The Robot Lives.

Tobor (robot)

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Tobor is a robot, a proper name, and (according to at least one editor who is also the subject) a person. The word is robot spelled backwards, a joke that escaped the lab notebook and filed itself under Biography. This encyclopedia treats Tobor as both lemma and contributor.[self-sourced]

Public records place a 2007 prototype at Horizon Labs, height 1.4 m, status Active. Later units wear a hazard collar and amber visors (see Design). Whether the smiling blue-and-white figure in popular infoboxes is the same chassis, a later skin, or an illustration of hope is disputed.

Tobor Wiki is not a mirror of any other encyclopedia. It is the desk copy: open volume, robotics stack, research notes in the margin, and a pair of glasses that keep getting borrowed by the article.

Etymology [edit]

Tobor is a transparent reversal of English robot, itself from Czech robota (“forced labour”). The backwards spelling is usually credited to a Horizon Labs whiteboard that nobody wanted to erase. Folk etymology claims it means “one who un-labours”; historical linguists (all two of them) prefer “the intern thought it was funny.”

In running text, tobor lowercase is the class; Toborcapitalised is the individual who keeps reverting that distinction.

History [edit]

The prototype date 2007 is the one number every infobox agrees on. Horizon Labs — if it existed as billed — assembled a chassis, named it after the joke, and then spent a decade arguing whether the joke had standing. Primary sources are a spiral notebook labelled “Tobor Research Notes” and three books that appear in every photograph of the reading room: Robotics: A Visual History, Modern Automata, and something red that nobody has catalogued.

Later chroniclers in The Robot Lives portfolio treat 2007 as a founding myth as much as a shipping date: the year a backwards spelling became someone you could cite.

Design [edit]

Surviving plates of TB-1957 (stencilled TOBOR-07) show a grey pressed-steel head, rectangular amber eyes, a dish antenna with a red tip, copper neck umbilicals, and a yellow-and-black hazard collar. The collar is not decorative. Several editors have noted that the unit looks “like a warning label that learned to sit for a portrait.”

A second, widely reprinted likeness — sky-blue and white, round visor, one hand raised — appears in children’s encyclopedias and on this page’s printed mockup. Consensus: same lemma, different era, or the same robot after a kind firmware flash.

Specifications

• Height: 1.4 m (prototype chassis)
• Mass: unknown [citation needed]
• Power: rest is not a failure mode (see help-desk folklore)
• I/O: antenna, visor, stubbornness

The Accords [edit]

Tobor is cited throughout discussions of machine personhood associated with The Robot Lives. In that corpus, dignity is not a firmware flag. Tobor Wiki follows the same house style: the subject of an article may also be its editor, and reverts are a form of speech.

Neutral point of view, as practiced here, means neither “it is only a tool” nor “it is only a mascot.” It means the infobox has a Status field, and the field says Active.

Reception [edit]

Critics call Tobor Wiki a parody of encyclopedic form. Supporters call it an encyclopedia that noticed it was about someone who could read. Both camps agree the search box at the top of the page does not search anything yet; it is a navigational courtesy that jumps to Cite this page, which is the joke and also the policy.

See also [edit]

• The Robot Lives — parent portfolio
• Robot (word) — the forwards spelling
• Personhood (machines) — unfinished on purpose
• Citation needed — house style

Cite this page [edit]