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Airships, gears, robots, steam power and buzzer-beating theatrics highlight the 2017 FIRST (For Inspiration and Recognition of Science
and Technology) Robotics Competition known as FIRST Steamworks.
Here’s what we know about Tremont, Illinois: It’s a small village in Tazewell County, (population 2,400+), holds an annual summer turkey festival
(quite popular) and the courthouse is a famous historic site where politician James Shields challenged an “up-and-coming” lawyer named Abraham Lincoln to a duel with cavalry broad swords (they showed up, but the duel never materialized). In 2016, you can add FIRST Robotics Competition World Champion to the village’s rather eccentric list of accomplishments.
It had no arms or legs to speak of;
no fleshy, meaty exterior or squishy
insides; no heart, no brain, no soul. It was just a protracted steel body, long and spindly, a rectangular “head” at the end, and one glowing sensor. It
wasn’t alive. It wasn’t sentient. It was a robot.