242 ANNUAL REPORT SMITHSONIAN INSTITUTION, 1953 



dexes, or positions the work, the hopper which feeds the machine, the 

 conveyor which takes the finished work away, the elaborate electronic 

 device which directs, coordinates, and controls a series of complex 

 operations — all these are examples of automation and as such are 

 steps toward the push-button factory. 



The term "automation" is of postwar vintage, but to discover its 

 begimiings we must go back even before there was any real American 

 industry, to 1784, when Oliver Evans built the first mechanized fac- 

 tory just outside Philadelphia, a continuous flour mill. This mill in- 

 corporated all three basic types of powered conveyors in a continuous 

 production line, unloading grain from boat or wagon and processing 

 it to finished flour without human aid. In 1833 biscuit manufacturing 

 was mechanized in the "victualling office" of the British Navy, and 

 in 1869 endless monorails were introduced into the meat-packing in- 

 dustry. These were designed for disassembly of hogs, but they were 

 the forerunner of the modern mechanized assembly line. 



Henry Ford first used progressive assembly on a powered conveyor 

 in 1914, the same year in which he offered $5 for an 8-hour day in an 

 industry where $2.40 for a 9-hour day was standard. That he was 

 successful in doing both is indicated by the fact that his original 

 investment of $28,000 grew to three-quarters of a billion dollars 

 by 1927. 



Many process and chemical companies achieved a high degree of 

 automation in the twenties. So did manufacturers of such products 

 as electric light bulbs, cigarettes, bottles, and tin cans. The A. O. 

 Smith Company in 1920 built an automatic factory to make automo- 

 bile chassis — a plant in which strip steel was blanked, formed, assem- 

 bled, riveted, and painted, producing a complete chassis every 10 

 seconds, ultimately 10,000 a day. The few workers present served not 

 as producers but as observers and troubleshooters. A more recent 

 milestone was the construction in England in 1948 of two machines to 

 produce radio sets automatically. 



These are the dramatic examples, but we must recognize that auto- 

 mation is not limited to completely automatic plants. The automation 

 of segments of industry and of individual machines is much more 

 widespread and much the same in its economic and social effects. The 

 lathe was little more than a woodworking novelty until it was given a 

 mechanical hand to hold the tool. Henry Maudslay in 1797 gave it 

 a lead screw, in effect a cam to control the movement of the cutting 

 tool along the work. Today we have the automatic screw machine on 

 which cams automatically advance the stock, change spindle speeds, 

 index and feed the tools to the work. 



The same story may be repeated for automatic drilling and millhig 

 machines, for punch presses which feed automatically through 



