128 ANNOTATIONS

Annotations

AUTOMATION

IT has long seemed that the cultured life of ancientGreece, based on slave labour, might be coming withinreach again-with the slaves, of course, humanelydisplaced by machines. Intimations of automation (nowin its early childhood) trail the clouds of glory nearer.The comic irony which dogs mankind will doubtlessensure that there is a catch, if not several catches, in it ;but in time, probably everything will be relativelysplendid. Meanwhile those who survey the prospectwith wide and shining eyes are mainly engineers. A

push-button factory, doing the whole job under thecare of a handful of men, most of them engaged inmaintenance, has been described as " technically possible,economically sound and humanly desirable." 1 P.E.P.give facts which suggest that the first of these claimsis accurate, the second doubtful, and the third anybody’sguess.2 The term " automation " has been defined byR. K. Geiser at an American conference as "the

accomplishment of a job by an integrated mechanismwith a minimum of assistance of any kind." This might,of course, merely mean doing the job oneself, but inindustry it is taken to refer to the accomplishment ofa job by means of various modern mechanical deviceselectronic, electromechanical, pneumatic, hydraulic, andothers. Electronic devices in particular have a respect-able future in this field, since they can be constructed" to plan and control the operation of a machine tool withhigh precision, detect faults in a processed part, and bymeans of a closed-loop circuit (widely known as ’feed-back’)can communicate the error to the machine and adjust its

operation so as to correct the fault ; they can integrate thework of individual machines ; the more complex of them canchoose between alternative decisions or courses of action

according to the instructions given them; finally, theyextend the possibilities of remote control."

They can thus be used to reduce greatly the amount ofroutine brainwork done in a factory, just as ordinarymachines have reduced the amount of routine muscularwork.

P.E.P. mention some ways in which firms have alreadyintroduced the principle of automation.In the 1:40 million refinery built by the Esso Petroleum

Company at Fawley, six men on any one shift operatedistillation units processing 51/2 million gallons of crude oildaily-thus meeting nearly a third of our inland daily con-sumption of oil products. At the catalytic cracking plant,eight men are needed in each shift. The new instrumentswhich have made this possible have paid for themselvesrapidly-those that control tank temperature in 6 monthsand the automatic apparatus for laboratory distillation in6 weeks.The Ford Motor Company, in America, was a pioneer of

automation, having installed the world’s first car assemblyline in 1914. Automatic transfer machines now move partsfrom one machine to another for the next stage of the process(cylinder heads, for instance, are produced by what amountsto no-touch technique). The Austin Motor Company hasadopted the same principles, and has gone further, transferr-ing parts by overhead trolleys to the final assembly line, atthe right time and in the right order. This unusual achieve-ment in human affairs is the work of an electronic controlunit, receiving its instruction from punched cards.

Another prospect is the automatic office, where allcalculations and manipulations of facts are made byinstruments and machines.

Messrs. J. Lyons & Co. have " Leo," an electronic officewhich works out the weekly wage packets of more than 7000

1. Lilley, S. Discovery, April, 1955, p. 147.2. Towards the Automatic Factory. Planning, 1955, 21, no. 380.

Published by Political and Economic Planning, 16, QueenAnne’s Gate, London, S.W.1. 2s. 6d.

of their London employees, analyses daily the trend of bakeryorders in Lyons teashops; and for a consideration gives spare-

_ time help to outside bodies. At the Fawley refinery, thecomputer Hec

"

helps to select a production plan to meetthe changing requirements of the market, and does all themathematical work entailed in a mass-spectrometer analysis

’ of refinery gases.

Computer salesmen, however, like travellers in cementdocks, have at present to be content with only occasionalsuccess. As P.E.P. say, " it is easier to sell an instru-ment for a clearly defined and labour-saving purpose,like wage-calculation, than for a new and relativelyuntried purpose like planning production." There isalready, however, the air-line " reservisor " in NewYork, which, when a button is pressed in a ticket-agency, correctly books or cancels passenger reservationsat the La Guardia airport ; but even this is economiconly because New York is such a busy centre for airtravel. Enthusiasts for automation are vexed by thepiecemeal manner in which many manufacturers are

succumbing to its charms. This is an opportunity, theysay, for working out the basic principles of factory andoffice organisation afresh. The manufacturers, how-ever, are probably right to be cautious : for havinginstalled an automatic office to deal with their wage-bill, and built an automatic factory controlled by buttons,they might well find that their new wage-bill could beworked out by one little girl on a slate.At present, as P.E.P. remark, automation seems to

create as many problems as it solves. Where, for instance,is the capital outlay to come from ? Would automationhelp us to balance our overseas payments or not ? Areour power resources equal to the probable demand ?Will management be flexible enough to make the

necessary drastic changes, and make them quickly Will automation mean serious unemployment ’? Andwhat will be the effect on the community ? Some peopleare already attempting to answer these questions.The Institution of Production Engineers held a con-

ference at Margate in June on " The Automatic Factory:

what does it mean ? " The Department of Scientificand Industrial Research is collecting information andassessing trends, and its joint committee (with theMedical Research Council) on human relations in industryhas sponsored a pilot research project at Cambridge,into " some human and social aspects of introducingautomatic control techniques in industry." The NationalPhysical Laboratory is looking into the technical possi-bility of mechanising clerical work at the Ministry ofPensions and National Insurance-a revolutionaryproject. On the subject of unemployment P.E.P. are

tentatively reassuring : our labour force will grow onlyfrom 23 million in 1954 to 24 million in 1979. A higherstandard of living must depend on higher production,and thanks to automation this could be achieved withshorter working hours. Our passages to ancient Greece(with no return tickets for Erewhon) seem to be booked.It remains to be seen whether we use our greater leisure- when it comes-to equally good purpose.

DETERGENT TREATMENT OF CONSTIPATION

PURGATIVES that are efficacious and safe, and them-selves cause no troublesome symptoms, are singularlyfew. After twelve years’ observation Wilson and Dickin-son/ of Ann Arbor, claim this combination of qualitiesfor a wetting agent-dioetyl sodium sulphosuccinate(’Aerosol T ’)-which acts by promoting the penetrationinto hard faeces of water or mineral oil.

Previous experimental work had yielded no evidenceof toxicity 2 ; and Wilson and Dickinson have adminis-

1. Wilson, J. L., Dickinson, D. G. J. Amer. med. Ass. 1955, 158, 261.2. Benaglia, A. E., Robinson, E. J., Utley, E., Cleverdon, M. A.

J. industr. Hyg. 1943, 25, 175.