"Rubber 'muscles' enable wood doll to walk."  From Popular Mechanics, 1919.

Here's a precursor to near-literates sharing their every thought on the internet.  "Dummy reproduces writing at a distance."  From Popular Mechanics, 1929.

Even if the Loch Ness Monster is an automaton, as Ure's Dictionary of 1846 suggests, "Does it then follow that the automaton possesses a freedom of action, a freedom of will?  Yes, we should think that it has a certain freedom of action (the freedom of will we had better leave aside because here the analogy is doubtful at present)" (I. G. Makarov, Cybernetics Today, 1984).

A page from the Arthur and Fritz Kahn Collection, courtesy of the Leo Baeck Institute Archives.

Here's a diplomat from Die Muskete, 1917.

"Hyman Gordon, 15, Boston, Mass., demonstrates his 'chemical man' he built out of bits of rubber, glass, cigar boxes and other odds and ends.  When the figure is stuck with a pin he reacts after the manner of a mortal.  He eats and digests food.  The tubes here indicate the lungs, heart, bladder, intestines, etc." (Milwaukee Sentinal, Jan, 11, 1936).  Photo by Leslie Jones.

The Chemical Man is obviously not to be confused with the Chemical Chicken (also photographed by Leslie Jones, date uncertain), nor (while we're at it) with Scrappo (the mechanical scrap metal creation made by the Marion County salvage committee, Salem, Oregon, 1942).  

Here's a precursor to the Tin Man of the Wizard of Oz (1900), from Judy, Or The London Serio-Comic Journal (1887).

"Machine in action," from , 1903.

Here's a precursor to anthropologist Amber Case saying our technology is changing us into cyborgs.  Circa 1890.

"The electric dynamostrich," from the Journal of Electricity, 1920.

From Review of Reviews and World's Work, 1893.

Here's a precursor to Westworld from Diseases of the Chest and the Principles of Physical Diagnosis, 1920.

From Scientific Amusements by Gaston Tissandier, 1890.   Also very much of interest: The Young Wizard's Hexopedia.