Marvin Minsky helped found what is now known as the MIT Computer Science and Artificial Intelligence Laboratory back in 1959. Only 9 years later, he constructed this tentacle arm, which shows an impressive level of sophistication. There isn’t too much info about it, but here’s the caption from the video, which was posted by MIT CSAIL:

“This film from 1968 shows Marvin Minsky’s tentacle arm, developed at the MIT AI Lab (one of CSAIL’s forerunner labs). The arm had twelve joints and could be controlled by a PDP-6 computer or via a joystick. This video demonstrates that the arm was strong enough to lift a person, yet gentle enough to embrace a child.”

[ MIT CSAIL ]