George Devol was an American inventor who designed and patented Unimate, the first programmable industrial robotic arm, using a magnetic-drum program memory to control a reusable mechanical arm rather than a single-purpose machine. Devol licensed the design to Joseph Engelberger, whose company Unimation put the first Unimate to work on a General Motors die-casting line in 1961. The National Inventors Hall of Fame credits his patent as the foundation of the modern robotics industry.
Facts
AwardNational Inventors Hall of Fame 2 Contribution Kind FAQs
Why did George Devol's magnetic recording invention end up inside a robot?
It was too slow for business data at Remington Rand, so it was reused as the machine control that became the brain of the Unimate.
Devol applied in 1946 for a patent on a magnetic recording system for controlling machines. In the early 1950s he licensed the recording device to Remington Rand and managed its magnetics department, where a team tried to use it for business data. It proved too slow for that purpose, so the invention was put to a new use as a machine control, and that control eventually became the brain of the Unimate robot.
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Source Wikipedia: George Devol
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Sources
1. Wikipedia: George Devol
Wikimedia FoundationLead paragraph, contribution kind
(February 20, 1912, August 11, 2011) was an American inventor, best known for creating Unimate, the first industrial robot.
In Field: Robotics, Introduction, quoting the National Inventors Hall of Fame
Devol's patent for the first digitally operated programmable robotic arm represents the foundation of the modern robotics industry.
View the Source 2. Wikidata: George Devol
Wikidata Q472378, class allow-list match (w-wdresolver-0926)View the Source Reader Challenges (0)
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