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. This description is adapted from Wikipedia contributors under CC BY-SA 4.0; changes were made. https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/
Facts
AwardNational Inventors Hall of Fame 2 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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Sources
1. Wikipedia: George Devol
Wikimedia FoundationIn Field: Robotics, Introduction, quoting the National Inventors Hall of FameQuote, 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.
2. Wikidata: George Devol
Wikidata Q472378, class allow-list match (w-wdresolver-0926)View the Source Reader Challenges (0)
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