In 1920, Czech writer Karel Čapek published a play titled R.U.R.

Those initials
stood for "Rossum's Universal Robots," which was the name of a fictional company
that manufactured human-like machines designed to perform hard, dull, dangerous
work for people. The machines in the play eventually grew to resent their jobs and
rebelled—with disastrous results for humans. During the writing of his play, Čapek
consulted with his brother, the painter and writer Josef Čapek, who suggested the
name robot for these machines, from the Czech word robota, which means "forced
labor." Robot made its way into our language in 1922 when R.U.R. was translated
into English.