{"id":1,"date":"1978-01-01T23:40:21","date_gmt":"1978-01-02T03:40:21","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/microtron.nu\/?p=1"},"modified":"2012-03-03T10:24:57","modified_gmt":"2012-03-03T14:24:57","slug":"introducing-microtron","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.daughterofkrypton.com\/microtron\/introducing-microtron\/","title":{"rendered":"Introducing Microtron"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>In the summer of 1976, a bright young teenager named Tod Loofbourrow built a 70 pound motorized mobile robot which he dubbed &#8220;Microtron&#8221; (or &#8220;Mike&#8221; for short).  His robot was controlled by the <a title=\"KIM-1 computer at oldcomputers.net\" href=\"http:\/\/oldcomputers.net\/kim1.html\" target=\"_blank\">KIM-1 computer<\/a>, was built out of angle aluminum and plywood, was powered by an 84-amp car battery, and could carry a load of 600 pounds. Both he and an early version of his &#8216;bot were written-up in the <a href=\"https:\/\/www.daughterofkrypton.com\/microtron\/the-original-microtron\/\">April, 1977 issue<\/a> of <em>Interface Age<\/em> magazine.<br \/>\n<em><br \/>\n(A PDF scan of that article is available <a href=\"http:\/\/cyberneticzoo.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2010\/09\/Mike-Microtron-InterfaceAge-Apr1977.pdf\" target=\"_blank\">here<\/a>.)<\/em><\/p>\n<p><a href=\"https:\/\/www.daughterofkrypton.com\/microtron\/the-original-microtron\/\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" src=\"https:\/\/www.daughterofkrypton.com\/microtron\/local_images\/InterfaceAgeApril1977-195.jpg\" alt=\"Interface Age Magazine, April 1977\" width=\"195\" height=\"252\" border=0\/><\/a><\/p>\n<p>Tod continued to develop the robot, and at the age of 16, he was approached by Hayden Publishing to write a book about it.  In 1978, <em><a href=\"http:\/\/www.amazon.com\/exec\/obidos\/ASIN\/0810456818\/theamalgamatronA\/\" target=\"_blank\">How to Build a Computer Controlled Robot<\/a><\/em> was published:<\/p>\n<p><a href=\"http:\/\/www.amazon.com\/exec\/obidos\/ASIN\/0810456818\/theamalgamatronA\/\" target=\"_blank\"><img decoding=\"async\" src=\"https:\/\/www.daughterofkrypton.com\/microtron\/local_images\/cover.jpg\" border=\"0\" alt=\"Cover scan and clean-up by microtron.nu\" title=\"Cover scan and clean-up by microtron. nu\" width=\"195\" \/><\/a><\/p>\n<p>Tod moved on to other things, but many hobby roboticists in the late 70s through the 1980s built their own Microtron robots using his book.  This website is <a href=\"https:\/\/www.daughterofkrypton.com\/microtron\/about\/\">about one of them<\/a>. (There are some other Microtron Robots linked to from this site&#8217;s right-hand navigation bar.)<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>In the summer of 1976, a bright young teenager named Tod Loofbourrow built a 70 pound motorized mobile robot which he dubbed &#8220;Microtron&#8221; (or &#8220;Mike&#8221; for short). His robot was controlled by the KIM-1 computer, was built out of angle aluminum and plywood, was powered by an 84-amp car battery, and could carry a load [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[3],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-history"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.daughterofkrypton.com\/microtron\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.daughterofkrypton.com\/microtron\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.daughterofkrypton.com\/microtron\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.daughterofkrypton.com\/microtron\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.daughterofkrypton.com\/microtron\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1"}],"version-history":[{"count":36,"href":"https:\/\/www.daughterofkrypton.com\/microtron\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":290,"href":"https:\/\/www.daughterofkrypton.com\/microtron\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1\/revisions\/290"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.daughterofkrypton.com\/microtron\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.daughterofkrypton.com\/microtron\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.daughterofkrypton.com\/microtron\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}