that's not what the ask was about in the slightest and i don't really understand where you've pulled that from(???).
also, the story was written in 1966.
AM was created during the cold war (1947-1991), but considering the time the story was created, it would be more accurate to date it as 1947-1966.
while artificial limbs/prosthetics have been around for a while, the things closest to that time period were industrial robotic arms, but those are not quite what AM would need.
myoelectric prosthetics from the 60s use muscle signals. AM has no muscles. now, i have looked into those prosthetics and their history, so here's what i've gathered, at least from my understanding.
what you seem to be thinking about (being able to feel something through prosthetics) would be reliant on BCI (Brain Computer Interfaces), which THEN relies on EEG (electroencephalography).
we're not gonna get into EEG, because while yes, it has technically been around since 1875 (the first publication about it by Dr Richard Caton), but that's not what we need here.
what we need here is a paper from 1973 by Jacques J. Vidal, which was the first attempt at "hey what if we use human brains for BCI, instead of monkeys and rabbits?" or something along those lines. they started thinking about this because of the rapid computer development.
which, if we go with our timeline, would mean that AM simply missed out on it if he wiped away humanity by 1966.
and then there's also the question of would AM be able to feel things? BCI needs a brain. AM doesn't have a brain. while he might be able to use pattern recognition and things like that to know things about textures and density, would he be able to feel it?
this leaves us with having to look into machine perception and, more specifically, machine touch.
i'll let wikipedia explain it for me, since it's just one paragraph. the little [13] thing is referring to an article from 2020.
basically meaning that machines themselves still cannot have a full human-like sensory experience right now, leave alone in the 60s.
so "realistically", no. he couldn't have fucking done that.
Machine Perception (yes, i'm using Wikipedia as source. this isn't a school project and you can look into the references section if you want the exact things)
Learnwing efficient haptic shape exploration with a rigid tactile sensor array (the 2020 article from the Wikipedia screenshot)
