These Robot Bartenders Would Like to Mix You a Drink  Wine,
beer, and other potent potables. Oct. 30 2013 6:45 AM  Do
Androids Dream of Electric Schnapps?  The history and future of
bartending robots.  Illustration by Mark Alan Stamaty.
Illustration by Mark Alan Stamaty  Pour one out for Stephen R.
Krause, a software developer and electronics engineer, dead this
year on his 76th birthday. His inventions helped companies take
stock of their merchandise and individuals check their lotto
numbers—and he combined the two interests (inventory control,
mechanized vice) in another invention yet: U.S. Patent 3,409,176
A, Automatic liquid dispensing device for cocktails and the
like.  In 1968, in a showroom decorated like a 19th-century
saloon, Krause unveiled an appliance instantiating an enduring
fetish of the 21st. The Comp-U-Bar 801 held 1,000 recipes in its
magnetic memory and chilled 36 liquor bottles in its one-ton
body. It mixed a drink in four seconds, a quickness to whet the
newswire’s interest: “The waitres