Miscellaneous Codexery

Automation

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Automation describes technologies that reduce human intervention in processes by predetermining decision criteria and embodying those predeterminations in machines.[1] It includes control systems for machinery, factories, boilers, telephone networks, and vehicle steering, from a household thermostat to large industrial systems.[2] A simple automatic control loop compares a measured value with a desired set point and uses the error signal to keep the process stable.[3]

Quick Facts

Term first widely used
1947 (Ford automation department)

Facts from the source article.

Key facts and history

The Persian Banū Mūsā brothers described automatic controls, including a feedback controller, in their Book of Ingenious Devices in 850 AD.[4] James Watt adopted the centrifugal governor for a steam engine in 1788, though it could not hold a set speed and caused oscillation.[5][6] Christiaan Huygens, during the seventeenth century, devised the centrifugal governor, a device employed to regulate the spacing between millstones.[7] Before 1947, the word automation saw limited use; its wider adoption began after Ford created an automation department in that year.[3]

Factory electrification, which spread rapidly from 1900 through the 1920s, brought with it the introduction of relay logic.[6] The 1930s saw the emergence of controllers that could make calculated adjustments based on deviations from a set point, instead of simply switching on or off.[8] Digital control was first employed at a chemical plant in 1959, specifically at Texaco's Port Arthur Refinery.[6] According to the World Bank's 2019 report, the economic effects of workers being displaced by automation are outweighed by the new jobs and industries created in the technology sector.[9]

What the cited sources add

The RCR Wireless News account states that in 1982 General Motors opened a "factory of the future" in Saginaw, Michigan, hoping to replace bureaucracy with automation and robotics.[10] Former GM CEO Roger Smith turned to Japanese robotics company FANUC to match Japanese factory efficiency.[10] According to Natural News, the rise of automation is more likely to sharply divide economic classes and cause widespread strife.[10] The Oxford Martin School study estimated that about 47 percent of total US employment is at risk of computerisation.[11]

References

  1. Wikipedia, "Automation" (CC BY-SA 4.0), which cites: Groover, "Fundamentals of Modern Manufacturing: Materials, Processes, and Systems", 2014; Agrawal, "Do we want less automation?", Science, 2023, p. 155–158 (original not read by us) en.wikipedia.org
  2. Wikipedia, "Automation" (CC BY-SA 4.0), which cites: Lyshevski, S.E. Electromechanical Systems and Devices 1st Edition. CRC Press, 2008. .; Lamb, Frank. Industrial Automation: Hands On (English Edition). NC, McGraw-Hill Education, 2013. . (original not read by us) en.wikipedia.org
  3. Wikipedia, "Automation" (CC BY-SA 4.0), which cites: Rifkin, "The End of Work: The Decline of the Global Labor Force and the Dawn of the Post-Market Era", Putnam Publishing Group, 1995, p. 66, 75; Bennett 1993 (we also read that source) en.wikipedia.org
  4. Wikipedia, "Automation" (CC BY-SA 4.0), which cites: Ahmad Y Hassan, Transfer Of Islamic Technology To The West, Part II: Transmission Of Islamic Engineering; J. Adamy & A. Flemming, "Soft variable-structure controls: a survey", Automatica, November 2004, p. 1821–1844; Otto Mayr (1970). The Origins of Feedback Control, MIT Press.; Donald Routledge Hill, "Mechanical Engineering in the Medieval Near East", Scientific American, May 1991, p. 64-69. (original not read by us) en.wikipedia.org
  5. Wikipedia, "Automation" (CC BY-SA 4.0), which cites: Partington, "A course of lectures on the Steam Engine, delivered before the Members of the London Mechanics' Institution ... To which is subjoined, a copy of the rare ... work on Steam Navigation, originally published by; "Transactions of the Society Instituted at London for the Encouragement of Arts, Manufactures, and Commerce", 1813; (original not read by us) en.wikipedia.org
  6. Wikipedia, "Automation" (CC BY-SA 4.0) en.wikipedia.org
  7. Wikipedia, "Automation" (CC BY-SA 4.0), which cites: "Charting the Globe and Tracking the Heavens", Princeton.edu; Bellman, "Adaptive Control Processes: A Guided Tour", Princeton University Press, 8 December 2015; Bennett, "A History of Control Engineering 1800–1930", Peter Peregrinus Ltd., 1979, p. 47, 266 (original not read by us) en.wikipedia.org
  8. Wikipedia, "Automation" (CC BY-SA 4.0), which cites: Field, "A Great Leap Forward: 1930s Depression and U.S. Economic Growth", Yale University Press, 2011 (we also read that source) en.wikipedia.org
  9. Wikipedia, "Automation" (CC BY-SA 4.0), which cites: "The Changing Nature of Work", The World Bank, 2019; Dashevsky, "How Robots Caused Brexit and the Rise of Donald Trump", PC Magazine, 8 November 2017; Torrance, "Robots for Trump: Did automation swing the US election?", Management Today, 25 July 2017; Harris, "The lesson of Trump and Brexit: a society too complex for its people risks everything John Harris", The Guardian, 29 December 2016; Darrell West, "Will robots and AI take your job? The economic and political consequences of automation", Brookings Institution, 18 April 2018; Clare Byrne en.wikipedia.org
  10. "Lights out manufacturing and its impact on society", RCR Wireless News, 10 August 2016. facts only, no text reused. rcrwireless.com
  11. "The Future of Employment: How susceptible are jobs to computerisation?", Oxford Martin School, September 2013. facts only, no text reused. oxfordmartin.ox.ac.uk

Each numbered sentence above was checked against the source it cites before publication. Sentences citing Wikipedia adapt text from the English Wikipedia article Automation (contributors), used under CC BY-SA 4.0; this entry is available under the same licence. Other sources were used for facts only; no text or images are copied from them.

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Sources

Compiled from Wikipedia and the sources listed below. Text from Wikipedia is available under CC BY-SA 4.0; this entry is adapted from it.

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