Elements of automation

Abstract

At the beginning of this book the increasing use of mechanisation during the industrial revolution was noted. The word ‘mechanisation’ has its origins in the Greek ‘mekhane’ which means ‘machine’, and was first used in English in the word ‘mechanic’ during the 14th century. Mechanisation refers to the application of machinery to do work previously done by humans, horses, oxen, etc. The term automation however, implies the concept of mechanisation with the added feature of automatic control. The word ‘automatic’, used first in the 18th century, was derived from the Greek ‘automatos’ meaning ‘acting independently’. James Watt’s governor (1788) was used to control the speed of a steam engine automatically, the Jacquard Loom (1804) used punched cards to control the pattern woven in cloth automatically, and in 1873 Christopher Spencer produced a fully automatic lathe with drum cams to control the movements of the cutting tools. The term ‘automation’ came into common usage in the 1940s in the motor car industry as a general description of the methods used to control processes automatically. The concept of the ‘automatic factory’ became popular about this time, the interest being evidenced by ‘Project Tinker-toy’ in 1954; this was previously discussed in Chapter 2. Here we will use the term ‘factory automation’ to encompass the equipment and techniques used either to eliminate the need for human work, as with industrial robots, or to assist humans, as in computer aided design (CAD; see also Chapter 21).