I Met... ELEKTRO!

I Met... ELEKTRO

In June 2019, I knew we would be leaving the Mansfield area, though it was not yet public knowledge.  It was time to begin checking things off the area bucket list.  My brother and Scott I had visited The Ohio State Reformatory previously and I checked a few more locations off the "Shawshank Redemption Trail" while my wife was working in Upper Sandusky.  For years, we'd eaten at Pisanello's Pizza Buffet in Bucyrus and just before we moved I learned that they offered slivered almonds as a pizza topping.  So after years of searching, there would be carry out pizza eaten in the "one-way moving van." (That's a post for another time...).  A Sunday afternoon visit (as evidenced by my clerical shirt) with Scott and family allowed another bucket list check off: The Mansfield Memorial Museum, Home of Elektro.

Elektro was a robot created by Westinghouse Corporation in Mansfield in the 1930s.  He was a popular part of the 1939 World's Fair in New York.  He could walk!  He could talk!  He could even smoke a cigarette!  In the photo, from left to right: reproduction of Herbert Televox, Elektro's "ancestor;" a very life-like robotic likeness of me; the original Elektro; and a painstakingly faithful reproduction of Elektro as he appeared at the World's Fair.

What does Elektro have to do with comic books, you ask?  It turns out writer Roy Thomas is a fan of World's Fairs and he incorporated the 1939 World's Fair into a number of storylines.  For example, in DC Comics' Secret Origins #7, a villain re-purposes the robot to attack the king and queen of England, who are visiting the World's Fair:  


Following the Fair (on Earth DC, at least), the World's Fairgrounds were re-purposed to serve as the All-Star Squadron.  Elektro was also repurposed and renamed--he became the robotic butler of the All-Star Squadron, with the new moniker Gernsback.  Gernsback survived World War II, as he is seen in the background of several issues of Justice Society of America (1992), drawn by Lancaster, Ohio, native Mike Parobeck.  

In the real world, Elektro continues to make his home at the Mansfield Memorial Museum, at least until curator Scott Schaut passes away.   
  




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