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94 people, organisations and other records · 122 relationships · 34 claims about a valueEverything recorded up to the chosen year, whether or not still in effect · Undated records included
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The 1863 letter says that people are creating their own successors by daily improving machines, and that in the course of ages people will find themselves the inferior race. Copy claim link
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Date 1863-06-13 · publication Role Context Register (kind of text) Satirical Missing element Machines gain power through human contrivance, not through their own design or research capacity. Scope and limits No machine improves itself or designs better machines in this letter; the improvement is human work.
The evidence 01 primary source Supports the claim
Darwin among the Machines ↗ The Press (Christchurch) · 1863-06-13
Archived copy, captured 2026-08-26: Darwin among the Machines ↗
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Source excerpt “we are ourselves creating our own successors; we are daily adding to the beauty and delicacy of their physical organization; we are daily giving them greater power [...] In the course of ages we shall find ourselves the inferior race.” Location in source Paragraph beginning "The views of machinery which we are thus feebly indicating"; column-image segment 4
Machine-checked · 2026-10-06
Source details and check notes Authors Cellarius (Samuel Butler) Version Papers Past article text (marked user-corrected) in the Internet Archive capture of 2026-08-26; quoted passages compared with the archived column images of the printed page (captured 2024-06-12). Papers Past returned a bot-protection page to scripted requests. A later check on 2026-10-06 verified the article text but could not retrieve the column images (HTTP 403). Canonical address Open the canonical source ↗ Accessed 2026-10-06 Language English (en) Archive copy Open archived copy, captured 2026-08-26: Darwin among the Machines ↗ . Captured 59609 days after the recorded publication date. An archive copy shows only what the archive retrieved on 2026-08-26. It does not prove what the page said earlier, and it can differ from the copy checked on 2026-10-06.Attribution The Press (Christchurch), 13 June 1863, via Papers Past (National Library of New Zealand). Reuse Public domain (published 1863; the author died in 1902). Papers Past: no known copyright (New Zealand).. Bibliographic metadata, editorial paraphrases and short attributed quotations (at most 50 words each) under Selekoa’s quotation policy. Public-domain text. Check notes Compared with column-image segment 4 (captured 2024-06-12). Status and meaning Editorial status. Not reviewed by an editor . An exploratory record that no editor has accepted. This status does not say whether a person has read any linked passage. Each evidence record above shows how it was checked.
Relation. A passage of the document bears on the proposition without meeting its criterion; the record names the missing element. It is not an articulation and implies no influence.
Date. Issue date of The Press, vol. III, issue 192, p. 1, in the Papers Past record.
Record ID ts-a1-butler-1863-context