Professional Documents
Culture Documents
by
Peter Marsh
“Automation” was coined only in the late 1940’s. Del Harder, an executive
with the Ford car company, is credited for bringing it into the language, it
obviously stems from the word “automatic” and is probably a shortening of an
earlier term, “automatization”. The new word came into common use in the
1950s, when there was a rash of books and magazine articles on the subject.
Any word that is given such a long and clumsy definition is clearly open to
misinterpretation. In evidence to the US Congress’s 1961 inquiry into the impact
of automation on unemployment. Malcolm Denise, a Ford vice-president,
complained that the meaning of a term that his company had coined was
“completely out of control”. The word originally denoted specific industrial
process. Denise went on however: I am disturbed... by the fact that automation
has taken on an additional meaning that has no relevance to real life. Although
no one actually defines it in this way in so many words, automation is frequently
used to mean anything that causes unemployment... It is easy to jump to
conclusion that the wizards of the laboratories are on the verge of making people
obsolete,
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*REPRINTED FROM: Peter Marsh, THE ROBOT AGE (Sphere Books: London,
1982), Chapter 2 and 3, pp. 9-22.
and, indeed, have already begun to do so. When at the same time,
unemployment problems are the result of automation.”
If people in the 1950s quarelled about the meaning of the word, no one
doubted that automation was the latest manifestation of a process that had been
taking place for centuries -- the substitution of machines for workers. In the
1950s and 1960s, people feared that a new breed of machines -- what US
congressman Adam Powell called “the Frankenstein of automation” -- would lead
to massive unemployment. Powell’s view was supported by an opinion poll in
Detroit which asked people whom or what they feared most. “The Russians”
came first and “automation” came second.
The concern was nothing new. For at least 700 years, people have been
scared of machines taking over their jobs.
About the same time, an inventor in Danz called Anthony Muller devised a
new kind of weaving machine for making textiles. Today, such people go to the
authorities for financial support because they believe they are helping the
community. Support was very thin on the ground in Muller’s day; fearing
unemployment and the unrest this would cause, the local mayor had the hapless
inventor murdered.
HUMAN ACTIONS
MECHANICAL DEVICES
US
Flour-mill US 1785 Steam engine Conveyor Machine/br
ain
Flock-making UK 1808 Steam engine Conveyor Mayor/
machinery brain
Biscuit-making UK 1830 Steam engine Conveyor Machine/
machinery brain
Meat-packing US 1880 Electricity/ Conveyor Machine/
equipment Steam engine brain
Assembly line US 1913 Electricity/ Conveyor Machine/
Steam engine brain
In one of the early mechanised devices, the horse and cart, an animal is
responsible for power while a person controls the contraption. But the element
responsible for action -- the cart’s wheels and axles -- is mechanical. The horse
and cart is a simple example of a mechanism that saves the human body from
doing something, in this case moving its legs to propel itself.
Simple automatic devices are far from new (see the fourth section of
Table). Soon after the first machine tools appeared later in the 18th century,
engineers modified them so that they could work by themselves for at least
some of the time. An operator would set his machine so that it cut, or fashioned
in some other ways, a piece of metal automatically. The workman would not
have to do anything while the operation took place. The control devices here
were camshafts and stops that ensured the machine’s cutting tool moved
correctly.
Going back even further, the pressure cooker was another early
automatic divice. It was invented in 1680 by the Frenchman Denis Papin. In the
pressure cooker, a regulator automatically keeps the pressure at a specified
level. The gadget has worked so well that many people’s kitchens, even today
would seem a little barer without one. The clock has to be around to ensure that
the machine strikes the hour on cue; if they did, the contraption would be
somehow self-defeating. In Salisbury Cathedral in Witshire you can see a clock
that for 700 years has struck the hour automatically, assuming, that is, that
people took the trouble to wind it up.
Finally, the Table shows the sixth kind of mechanism - truly automated
devices. These are automatic contraptions, with one or more extra ingredients
that concern control. To get a strict definition of automation, we can say:
a) SYSTEMS APPROACH
b) PROGRAMMABILITY
c) FEEDBACK
With “programmability:, the second of the three extras that are important
in automation a system can do more than one kind of job. An industrial robot is
an automated machine; it works automatically and an operator can reprogram
the computer that controls it to make the machine do different things. It can be
as much at home welding bit of metal together as holding a spray gun to paint a
car body.
At least, this is the case while automation is inflexible. But, and this is a
big but, flexible automation is on the way.
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*For the moment, consider a robot to be a mechanical arm that acts similarly to a
human’s and is controlled by a computer here automated machinery has
programmability and feedback and can turn out different kinds of goods. The
equipment will make a tremendous difference to factory floors throughout the
world Flexible automation adds up to a new industrial era.
Making this great change possible was first, the steam engine; in the early
part of the 18th century, steam was harnessed to make a controllable, movable
power sources. Secondly, innovators such as Richard Arkwright and James
Hargreaves devised mechanical contraptions to make spinning and weaving
more efficient. The first industrial revolution took place in England between 1760
and 1840.
In the second revolution, from 1880 to 1920, electricity was the technical
driving force. It provided power for factories that was easier and cheaper to
control than steam. The revolution’s epicentre was the US. It was marked also
by the growing importance of science-based industries, such as chemicals
growing importance of science-based industries, such as chemicals and
electrical godds, and the use of scientifically-designed production methods, such
as the semi-automatic assembly lines. . .
Suppose the factory’s owner wants to change the type of part made with
the equipment. There is one simple answer to this problem: he can’t. The only
way to change that part--to make a gear-box casing of a slightly different shape
for instance - is to take the system apart and rebuild it from scratch.
Transfer lines cost several million pounds. Once someone owns one, he
does not want to scrap it in a hurry. So the people who operate such equipment
make with it only parts that they can be reasonably sure will not change in shape
for at least a couple of years. Further, they can justify the immense cost of the
hardware only if it works for a large proportion of the day, turning out huge
quantities of identical parts.
The process is slow, inefficient, and requires lots of people, space and
machinery. Of course, some bright engineer could devise for the manufacturer
automated equipment that turns out the fuse-box casings in a series of steps on
a transfer line. But as the factory must constantly vary its output -- to cater for
different customers who want different kinds of fuse-boxes, perhaps to fit into
equipment of different size of power -- such a system would be used for only a
fraction of the working day.
There is another problem. The factory has a nice little sideline making
castings for gear boxes. It needs the clumsy collection of independent machine
tools to turn out these products. Take them away and replace them with a
single-purpose automated line and the manufacturer would find much of his
sales had dried up. What wonderful solution if someone could make an
automated system that turn out not just one kind of product but several
variations: The factory owner would then get the benefits of automation --
reduced labour and machinery costs, greater speed and reliability -- but on terms
that suited him.
Events not far short of such bizarre conjuring tricks are starting to occur
on factory floors. Flexible, automated machinery is now becoming technically
feasible. Featuring in this are robots -- the most interesting example of flexible
automation -- but other kinds of equipment enter the story as well. The new
machinery will have two main effects.