"I have too much regard to forward an invention which would reduce [workers] to starvation," Queen Elizabeth I, 1592 #readingToday

Our modern fear that robots will steal all the jobs fits a classic script. Nearly 500 years ago, Queen Elizabeth I cited the same fear when she denied an English inventor named William Lee a patent for an automated knitting contraption. "I have too much regard for the poor women and unprotected young maidens who obtain their daily bread by knitting to forward an invention which, by depriving them of employment, would reduce them to starvation," she told Lee, according to one account of the incident.