19th century silent film that first captured a robot attack

I worked on a massive audio (78s) digitization project for the LOC and it was a blast to see the process of how these archivists and their outsourced crews (like us) worked to maintain the human arts. It was an odd feeling, I never had a client prior to that make me feel like our work was so important.

Well, to be pedantic, if it's 19th century it would have to be an automaton. The word robot wasn't coined until 1923.

Oh boy, this takes me down memory lane.

George Meliese's silent films and automatons were at the core of the beautifully illustrated and written YA novel from the mid-2000s named The Invention of Hugo Cabret [0].

[0] - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Invention_of_Hugo_Cabret

"[...] attacks a human clown with a stick."

Why does NPR call Gugusse "a human clown" ? He is not wearing clown clothes.

Gugusse looks more to me like the "mad inventor" of the robot, with a comedic bald head.