Robots today are making significant inroads into many aspects of modern life, from their initial roots in industrial manufacturing moving now into healthcare, transportation, logistics, and exploration of deep space and the oceans. This chapter sketches the fascination of this field and its evolution from ancient to modern times. The journey takes us through numerous milestones: from the first automated mechanical artifact (1400 BC) through the establishment of the robot concept in the 1920s, the realization of the first industrial robots in the 1960s, the definition of robotics science and the birth of an active research community in the 1980s, and the expansion into the challenges of our modern twenty-first-century world.