The history of automation from the cuckoo clock to computerized numerical control automation in precision engineering is a study in the development of machines used as tools and controlling tools. Machines that could produce a product was the work of manually built machines, but producing a machine by feeding an abstract code into a computer that could produce a product was a leap into the computerized numerical control machining.
An innovation from the cam technology that had been used in music boxes and cuckoo clocks were the lathes developed by inventors Thomas Blanchard and Christopher Miner Spencer. In the 1800′s, Jacquard Loom and Charles Babbage invented abstractly programming control in mechanical computers, though not used by machine tool control makers.
Applying hydraulics to tracing templates using a stylus, which helped industrialize automation, developed machines like the Pratt and Whitney “Keller Machine”. Capturing the manual movements of a machinist on a machine and playing those movements back on command by a machine was a method invented by General Motors in the 1950′s.
The problem with developing a computerized numerical control machine was in the degree of reliability in the reading by the machine of the abstract code. The invention of the Servo, which gave right measurement information, solved that problem.
A Selsyn was made by the performance of two servos. A Selsyn could be read by a variety of mechanical and electrical systems to ensure that the right information had been transferred in their products.
While working for General Electric, Ernst F. W. Alexanderson, a Swedish immigrant, suggested that Selsyn be used for machining control. Using a mechanical computer, Alexanderson was able to run big motors on little force, and General Electric used this invention in their gun laying system for United States Navy Ships.
The work of John T. Parsons in 1942 gave him the credit for founding the numerical control machine in his efforts to make a helicopter propeller. Needing help on his punch card input machine, Parsons turned to MIT who took his invention and to Parsons surprise, left him out of production.
Later, John Runyon made punch tapes on the Whirlwind using computer control. The Air Force in June 1956, proposed a uniform language for “programming” introducing computerized numerical control.
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