Tech Time Warp of the Week: SAM the Intelligent Robot, 1989

Amazon is now running live robots inside its distribution centers, drones that rapidly shuttle merchandise across these massive warehouses so that the world's largest retailer can ship you all those holiday gifts without delay. These orange'bots know exactly where they're going, and they know exactly what objects they need to grab. They even plug themselves into charging stations when they need more juice. But not as impressive as SAM, the 450-pound bot that could understand upwards of six trillion spoken phrases and respond accordingly. And SAM was doing it back in 1989. He looked like little more than an enormous mechanical arm.