In some of the world's biggest
factories there is scarcely a man in sight. Yet all around machinery is turning
and products are being made. How is this possible? By automation, or the
automatic control of machines.
The machines are controlled not by
workers turning knobs or pulling levers, but automatically by a series of
'instructions' fed into them on punched cards or magnetic tape. All an operator
has to do is to insert the card or tape into a control unit for the machine and
press the starting button. Sometimes he does not even have to do that. The
machine may be under the remote control of a computer, or 'electric brain'.
Information about what the machine
is doing is fed back constantly to the control unit. There it is compared with
what the machine should be doing. If there is any difference, the machine
corrects itself instantly. This kind of feedback of information makes the
machine self-regulating and is the real key to automation. The devices that
control and correct the machines are called servomechanisms.
Automation is widespread in the
petroleum and chemical industries, where the processes involve the flow of
liquids and gases at certain temperatures and pressures. Self-regulating
devices for flow, temperature and pressure are relatively simple.
The word automation is also used
to describe the use of machinery to save manual labor. The trend in industry
over the last two hundred years has been increasing mechanization and streamlining
of production techniques.
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