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Article: Automation
- Article from:
- Dictionary of American History
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AUTOMATION
Roots of Automation
"Automation" refers more to an ideal for industrial production than any one set of technologies or practices. The word was coined in 1946 by the Ford Motor Company's vice president, Dale S. Harder, who used it to describe the automatic or semiautomatic mechanical equipment then coming into use for the assembly of automobiles, the machining of automobile parts, and the stamping of sheet metal items such as fenders. While the popular press sometimes described these machines as "robots," implying a humanlike flexibility of application, the technologies Harder described were designed to perform a single task. Later, the term automation was often used to ...