Part 16

_Conventional_ _Tape Control_

Tooling $755 $45

Setup time 15 min. 15 min.

Work time 15 min. 11 min.

Cost per $2.96 $1.81 part

Beyond the automated single- or multipurpose tool is the completely computer-controlled assembly line. Complete automation of products like automobiles may be some distance off, but there is nothing basically unworkable about the idea. Simpler things will be made first, and to promote thinking along these lines, Westinghouse set up an automatic assembly line for paperweights. An operator typed the initials of manufacturing department managers on a computer, which transferred the instructions to a milling machine. The machine cut the initials in aluminum blocks which were then automatically finished, painted, and packaged for shipment as completed paperweights.

Another firm, Daystrom, Inc., is designing a computer control system for assembly lines which will adjust itself for the “best” product as an output. President Tom Jones described the principle in which the computer will begin production, then move valves, switches, or other controls a small amount. Measuring the finished product, it will decide if the change is in the right direction, and proceed accordingly. Once it finds the optimum point, it will lock in this position and settle down to business.

An excellent example of the computerized assembly line is the Western Electric Company carbon resistor production line at its Winston-Salem plant. A digital computer with a 4,096-word memory is used for the programming, setup, and feedback control of the eleven-station line. It can accept a month’s scheduling requirements for deposited carbon high-quality resistors in four power ratings and almost any desired resistance values. Production rate is 1,200 units per hour.

The computer keeps track of the resistors as they are fabricated, rejecting those out of specification and adjusting the process controls as necessary. Operations include heating, deposition of carbon, contact sputtering, welding, grooving, and inspecting.

_The Robots_

Most of these automated factory operations are doing men’s work, but it is only when we see the robot in the shape of ourselves that cold chills invade our spines. Children’s Christmas toys lately have included mechanical men who stride or roll across the floor and speak, act, and even “think” in more or less humanoid fashion, some of them hurling weapons in a rather frightening manner. There is an industrial robot in operation today which may recall the dread of Frankenstein, though its most worried watchers are perhaps union officials. Called Unimate, this factory worker has a single arm equipped with wrist and hand. It can move horizontally through 220 degrees, and vertically for 60 degrees, and extend its arm from 3 feet to 7 feet at the rate of 2-1/2 feet a second. Without a stepladder, it can reach from the floor to a point nearly 9 feet above it. Unimate can pick up 75 pounds, and its 4-inch fingers can clamp together on an iron bar or a tool with a force of up to 300 pounds.

The robot weighs close to a ton and a half, but can be moved from job to job on a fork-lift truck. Its designers have turned up a hundred different jobs that Unimate could do, including material loading, packaging, welding, spray painting, assembly work, and so on. The robot has a memory and can retain the 16,000 “bits” of information necessary for 200 operations. To teach it a new task, it is only necessary to “help” it manually through each step one time. Unimate can be instructed to wait for an external signal during its task, such as the opening of a press or a furnace door.

Advantages of a robot are many and obvious. Pretty girls passing by will not distract it, nor will it require time for lunch or coffee breaks, or trips to the washroom. If necessary it will work around the clock without asking for double power for overtime. High temperatures, noxious gases, flying sparks, or dangerous liquids will not be a severe hazard, and Unimate never gets tired or forgets what it is doing.

But Unimate has some drawbacks that are just as obvious. It can’t tell one color from another, and thus might paint parts the wrong color and never know the difference. It is not readily movable, and not very flexible either. It costs $25,000, and will need about $1,300 in maintenance a year. Some industry spokesmen say that this is far too much, and Unimate has a long way to go before it puts any people out of work. Others say it is a step in the right direction, and this is probably a fair evaluation.

Apparently United States Industries, Inc., whose AutoTutor teaching machines are pacing the field, has made another step in the right direction with its “TransfeRobot 200.” This mechanical assembly-line worker is an “off-the-shelf” item, and currently in use by about fifty manufacturers. TransfeRobot uses its own electronic brain, coupled with a variety of magnetic, mechanical, or even pneumatic fingers to pick up, position, insert, remove, and do other necessary operations on small parts.

Besides these capabilities, TransfeRobot controls secondary operations such as drilling, embossing, stamping, welding, and sealing. It is now busy building things like clocks, typewriters, automobile steering assemblies, and electrical parts. No one-job worker, it can be re-programmed for other operations when a new product is needed, or quickly switched to another assembly line if necessary. Billed as a new hand for industry, TransfeRobot obviously has its foot in the door already. United States Industries estimates current yearly sales of its small automation equipment at about $3 million.

The robots in Čapek’s play _R.U.R._ looked like their human makers, but scientist Claude Shannon is more realistic. “These robots will probably be something squarish and on wheels, so they can move around and not hurt anybody and not get hurt themselves. They won’t look like the tin-can mechanical men in comic strips. But you’ll want them about man-size, so their hands will come out at table-top or assembly-line level.” Since Professor Shannon is the man who sparked the implementation of symbolic logic in computers, his ideas are not crackpot, and the Massachusetts Institute of Technology’s Hand project is a good start toward a real robot. Dr. Heinrich Ernst, a young Swiss, developed Hand with help from Shannon. Controlled by a digital computer, the hand moves about and exercises judgment as it encounters objects. Such research will make true robots of the remotely manipulated machines we have become familiar with in nuclear power experiments, underwater exploration, and so forth. Hughes Aircraft’s “Mobot” is a good example, and it is obvious that the robot’s bones, muscles, and nerves are available. All they need is the brain to match.

While we wait fearfully for more robots which look the way we think robots should, the machine quietly takes over controlling more and more even bigger projects. The computer does a variety of tasks, from the simple one of cutting rolling-mill stock into optimum lengths to minimize waste, to that of running an electronic freight yard in which cars are classified and made up automatically. The computer in this application not only measures the car and weighs it, but also computes its rollability. Using radar as its eyes, the computer gauges the speed and distance between cars as they are being made up and regulates their speed to prevent damaging bumps. To the chagrin of veteran human switchmen, the computer system has proved it can “hump” cars—send them coasting to a standing car for coupling—without the occasional resounding crash caused by excessive speed.

About all that is holding up similarly automated subway trains in the United States is approval from the union. Soviet Russia claims she already has computer-run subways and even ships. The latter application took place on the oil tanker _Engineer Pustoshkin_ plying the Caspian Sea. The main complaint of the director of this research work, P. Strumpe, is that ships are not yet designed for computer control and will change for the better when their designers realize the error of their ways.

Minneapolis-Honeywell in this country is working toward the complete automation of buildings, pointing out that they are as much machines as structures. A 33-story skyscraper in Houston will use a central computer to check 400 points automatically and continuously. Temperature and humidity will be monitored, as well as doors and windows. Presence of smoke and fire will be automatically detected, and all mechanical equipment will be monitored and controlled. Equipped with cost figures, the central computer will literally “run” the building for optimum efficiency and economy. Harvard University has a central control for seventy-six campus buildings, and in Denver work is being done toward a central control for a number of large buildings. It is fitting that automation of buildings be carried on, since historically it was in the home that self-control of machines was pioneered with automatic control of furnaces with thermostats.

In this country our traffic is crying for some kind of control, and New York is already using punched-card programming to control part of the city’s traffic. The Federal administration is studying a bold proposal from RCA, Bendix, General Motors, and Westinghouse for an automatically controlled highway. The reason? Traffic is getting to be too much for the human brain to deal with. A better one has to be found, and the computer is applying for the job.

The coming of automation has been likened to a tidal wave. It is useless to shovel against it, and the job would seem to be to find suitable life preservers to keep us afloat as it sweeps in over the world. One approach is that of a nonprofit foundation to study the impact of automation on workers. This group, a joint United States Industries, Inc., and International Association of Machinists organization, has already come up with a scheme for collecting “dues” from the machines, in annual amounts of from $25 to $1,000, depending on the work output of the machine.

A key project of the foundation is a study of effective retraining of workers to fit them for jobs in the new, computerized factory. Such studies may well have to be extended from the assembly line to the white-collar worker and executive as well. The computer can wear many different kinds of hats!

Teaching Machine Age Lilyn E. Carlton in _Saturday Review_

“_In the good old-fashioned school days, Days of the golden rule, Teacher said, ‘Good morning, class,’ And so she started school._

_Alas! How different things are now, The school day can’t begin Till someone finds the socket And plugs the teacher in._”

10: The Academic Computer

It was inevitable that the computer invade, or perhaps “infiltrate” is the better word, our education system. Mark I and ENIAC were university-born and -bred, and early research work was done by many institutions using computers. A logical development was to teach formal courses in using the computer. While application of the machine in mathematical and scientific work came first, its application to business and to the training of executives for such use of the computer was soon recognized. As an example, one of two computers installed by U.C.L.A. in 1957 was for use exclusively in training engineering executives as well as undergraduates in engineering economy.

Early courses were aimed at those already in industry, in an attempt to catch them up with the technology of computer-oriented systems in business and science. As special courses, many of these carried a high tuition fee. Next came the teaching of professors and deans of engineering institutions in techniques of computer education for undergraduates. Today the computer is being taught to many students in many schools. New York University has a $3 million computer at its Courant Institute of Mathematical Sciences, being used by students in basic and applied research on projects ranging from the design of bridges to the analysis of voting patterns in Congress.

M.I.T. recently added a digital computer to teach its students the operation of electronic data-processing equipment. Another computer is used in more sophisticated work including speech analysis, study of bioelectrical signals, and the simulation of automata as in the “Hand” project. At the computing center of the University of Michigan a second generation of computers is being installed. Students in some one hundred different courses use these computers, programming them with a language developed at the University and called MAD, for Michigan Algorithm Decoder. These are typical examples of perhaps two hundred schools using computers.

That knowledge of computer techniques is essential for the engineering graduate is evident in the fact that of a recent class of such students at Purdue, 1,600 used the computer during the term. Less known is the integration of computer courses in secondary education. The Royal McBee Corporation teaches a special course on the computer to youngsters at Staples High in Westport, Connecticut. At the end of the first four-week session it was found that the students, fifteen to seventeen years old, had learned faster than adults. At New York’s St. Vincent Ferrer Catholic High School, 400 girls participated in a similar project conducted by Royal McBee. Other high schools are following suit, and computers are expected to appear in significant numbers in high schools before the end of 1962. Textbooks on computers, written for high-school students, are available. As an example of the ability of young people in this field, David Malin of Walter Johnson High School in Rockville, Maryland, read his own paper on the use of computers to simulate human thought processes to science experts attending the 1961 Eastern Joint Computer Conference held in Washington, D.C.

The use of the computer in the classroom encompasses not only colleges and high schools, but extends even to prisons. Twenty inmates of a Pennsylvania state institution attended a pilot program teaching computer techniques with a UNIVAC machine.

The United States is not alone in placing importance on the computer in schools. Our Department of Commerce has published details of Russian work in this direction, noting that it began in 1955 and places high priority on the training of specialists in computer research, machine translation, automation, and so on. The Department of Commerce feels that these courses, taught at the graduate, undergraduate, and even high-school level, are of high quality.

_Teaching Machines_

Thus far we have talked of the computer only as a tool to be studied and not as an aid to learning in itself. In just a few years, however, the “teaching machine” has become familiar in the press and controversial from a number of standpoints, including those of being a “dehumanizer” of the process of teaching and a threat to the apple business!

Actually, the computer has functioned for some time outside the classroom as a teaching machine. Early applications of analog computers as flight simulators were true “teaching machines” although perhaps the act was not as obvious as classroom use of a computer to teach the three R’s. Even today, there are those who insist that such use of the computer by the military or industry offers more potential than an academic teaching machine. Assembly workers have been taught by programmed audiovisual machines such as Hughes Aircraft’s Videosonic trainer, and the government has taught many technicians by computer techniques. A shrewd observer, however, noting that the computer is called stupid, bluntly points out that any untaught student is in the same category, and that perhaps it takes one to teach one.

A strong motivation for looking to the machine as a public teaching tool is the desperation occasioned by the growing shortage of teachers. If the teaching machine could take over even some of the more simple chores of the classroom, early advocates said, it would be worth the effort.

Formal study of machine methods of teaching have a history of forty years or more. In the 20’s, Sydney Pressey designed and built automatic teaching—or more precisely, testing—machines at Ohio State University. These were simply multiple-choice questions so mechanized as to be answered by the push of a button rather than with a pencil mark. A right answer advanced the machine to the next question, while an error required the student to try again. Pressey wisely realized the value in his machines; the student could proceed at his own pace, and his learning was also stimulated by immediate recognition of achievement. To further enforce this learning, some of the teaching machines dispensed candy for a correct answer. Using this criterion, it would seem that brighter students could be recognized by their weight.

Unfortunately, Pressey’s teaching machines did not make a very big splash in the academic world, because of a combination of factors. The machines themselves had limitations in that they did not present material to be learned but were more of the nature of _a posteriori_ testing devices. Too, educators were loath to adopt the mechanized teachers for a variety of reasons, including skepticism, inertia, economics, and others. However, machine scoring of multiple-choice tests marked with special current-conducting pencils became commonplace.

Another researcher, B. F. Skinner, commenced work on a different kind of teaching machine thirty years ago at Harvard. Basically his method consists of giving the subject small bits—not computer “bits,” but the coincidence is interesting—of learning at a time, and reinforcing these bits strongly and immediately. Skinner insists that actual “recall” of information is more important than multiple-choice “recognition,” and he asks for an answer rather than a choice. Called “operant reinforcement,” the technique has been used not only on man, but on apes, monkeys, rats, dogs, and surprisingly, pigeons.

During World War II, Dr. Skinner conducted “Project Pigeon” for the military. In this unusual training program, the feathered students were taught to peck at certain targets in return for which they received food as a reward. This combination of apt pupils and advanced teaching methods produced pigeons who could play ping-pong. This was in the early days of missile guidance, and the pigeons next went into training as a homing system for these new weapons! To make guidance more reliable, not one but three pigeons were to be carried in the nose of the device. Lenses in the missile projected an image before each pigeon, who dutifully pecked at his “target.” If the target was in the center of the cross hairs, the missile would continue on its course; if off to one side, the pecking would actuate corrective maneuvers. As Project “Orcon,” for Organic Control, this work was carried on for some time after the end of the war. Fortunately for the birds, however, more sophisticated, inorganic guidance systems were developed.

The implications of the pigeon studies in time led to a new teaching method for human beings. Shortly after Skinner released a paper on his work in operant reinforcement with the pigeons, many workers in the teaching field began to move in this direction. For several years Skinner and James Holland have been using machines of this type to teach some sections of a course in human behavior to students at Radcliffe and Harvard. Rheem Califone manufactures the DIDAK machine to Skinner’s specifications.

To the reasons advanced by those who see teacher shortages looming, Skinner adds the argument that a machine can often teach better. Too much time, he feels, has been spent on details that are not basic to the problem. Better salaries for teachers, more teachers, and more schools do not in themselves improve the actual teaching. Operant reinforcement, Skinner contends, _does_ get at the root of the problem and, in addition to relieving the teacher of a heavy burden, the teaching machine achieves better results in some phases of teaching. It also solves another problem that plagues the educator today. It is well known that not all of us can learn at the same rate. Since it is economically and culturally impossible except in rare cases to teach children in groups of equal ability, a compromise speed must be established. This is fine for the “average” child, of whom there may actually be none in the classroom; it penalizes the fast student, and the slow student perhaps even more. The teaching machine, its proponents feel, takes care of this difficulty and lets each proceed at his own rate. Since speed in itself is no sure indicator of intelligence, the slow child, left to learn as he can, may reach heights not before dreamed possible for him.

Many educators agree that automated teaching is past due. James D. Finn, Professor of Education at the University of Southern California, deplores the lack of modern technology in teaching. “Technology during the period from 1900 to 1950 only washed lightly on the shores of instruction,” he says. “The cake of custom proved to be too tough and the mass production state, at least 100 years behind industry, was not entered except here and there on little isolated islands.”

These little isolated islands are now getting bigger and closer together. The Air Force has for some time trained technicians at Keesler Field with U.S. Industries AutoTutor machines, and also uses them at the Wright Air Development Center. The Post Office Department has purchased fifty-five U.S. Industries’ Digiflex trainers. Following this lead, public education is beginning to use teaching machines. San Francisco has an electronic computer version that not only teaches, tests, and coaches, but even sounds an alarm if the student tries to “goof off” on any of the problems. The designers of the machine selected a sure-fire intellectual acronym, PLATO, for Programmed Logic for Automatic Teaching Operations. The System Development Corporation, the operations firm that designed the SAGE computer, calls its computer-controlled classroom teacher simply CLASS. This machine uses a Bendix G-15 computer to teach twenty youngsters at a time.