Flying, Spying and Planet Roving The Let's Go Club

This is The Let's Go Club, but mini!

Expect making, exploring, supersizing, dancing,

fact-finding and laughing.

We've only got a few minutes,

so get ready for more fun from The Let's Go Club.

Fact fans, today we're finding out all about computers and robots.

Silicon chips, whirring cogs,

circuits, wires, nuts and bolts,

beeps and bleeps, data banks,

super brains, mechanical cranks,

tapping keyboards, swiping screens,

bytes and bits and laser beams.

Let's get to those facts.

First up, one of the first ever robots was a steam-powered pigeon.

What a lot of hot air!

A clever man from Greece called Archytas wanted to learn more

about how birds fly, so he built a robo-bird.

The robot pigeon could fly the length of two football pitches.

The only problem was that once it landed,

the pigeon couldn't take off again to fly home.

It had run out of steam!

Next, the very first computer was heavier than an elephant.

ELEPHANT TRUMPETS That's a weighty fact!

The computer was called Colossus and was as big as a bus.

TOOT-TOOT! But only a few people knew

about Colossus because it did top-secret jobs -

cracking codes and finding out spy information.

(Shh! Don't tell anyone.)

Next, there are robots on the planet Mars.

That is out of this world!

The robots are called Mars Rovers and took months and months

to get to the Red Planet.

Their job is to do experiments so that we can learn more about Mars

and find out if anything lives there.

Just one problem - no-one has worked out a way to get the robots back,

so they're stuck on another world forever.

It's a good job robots don't get lonely!

And finally, in South Africa, traffic lights are called robots.

Let's put the brakes on.

Back in the olden days policemen organised the traffic,

telling cars when to stop and when to go using hand signals.

Then electric traffic lights were invented.

They replaced the real policemen,

so people started calling the lights "robot policemen".

And, over time, this name was shortened to just robots.

That's red, amber and green for go-bot. Fact.

You can join The Let's Go Club too.

Grab a grown-up and head to the CBeebies website.

There are songs to sing, things to make and do, and CBeebies Radio too.

Remember, we're the club that never closes.