George Devol
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| George Charles Devol, Jr | |
 George Devol in 1982
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| Born | February 20, 1912 Louisville, Kentucky |
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| Occupation | Inventor, entrepreneur |
George Charles Devol Jr. born February 20, 1912 in Louisville, Kentucky, is the inventor of the first industrial robot Unimate. He co-founded the business Unimation. As an inventor he has held over 40 patents. Devol has also resided in Fort Lauderdale, Florida operating a robot consulting business.[1]
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[edit] Biography
Born in Louisville, Kentucky in 1912, Devol was interested from boyhood in all things mechanical such as boats, airplanes, and engines.
He got some practical experience at Riordan Academy, where, in addition to studying traditional subjects, he built buildings and ran the school's electric light plant. Although he wasn't very good scholar he read everything he could about mechanical devices trying to discover what, besides building radios, could be done with the then recently invented vacuum tubes.
[edit] United Cinephone
Choosing to forego higher education, in 1932 Devol went into business for himself, forming United Cinephone to produce variable area recording directly onto film for the new talkies.
When he discovered that large companies like RCA and Western Electric were working in the same area, however, he decided to discontinue the product. The company did continue to manufacture photoelectric doors and other products using photoelectric cells.
United Cinephone also manufactured Orthoplane lighting for garment factories, another product Devol patented. The company also manufactured phonograph arms and amplifiers. In fact, Devol installed amplifiers at the Cotton Club and enjoyed watching Count Basie, Fred Waring and others, occasionally taking in the after-hours jam session.
In 1939 United Cinephone installed automated counters at New York World's Fair to count customers entering the fairgrounds.
[edit] World War II
Around the time the World War II began, Devol dissolved United Cinephone and offered his services to Sperry Gyroscope, where he helped to develop radar scanners.
In 1943, knowing that counter-radar measures would be useful, he formed General Electronics as a subsidiary of the Auto Ordinance Corporation to produce counter-radar devices until the end of the war. General Electroncis quickly became the country's largest radar counter-measure company and ultimately had over 2,000 employees. The company's radar counter-measure systems were on the allied planes on D-Day.
At the beginning of the war, Devol had a patent pending for proximity controls for use in laundry press machines. The Theremin-like technology would automatically open and close laundry presses when the worker would approach the machine. This is the first known instance of the application of Theremin's technology to mechanical systems. Once the war began, Devol was advised that his patent would be placed on hold for the duration, and was now top-secret. Devol was sworn to secrecy regarding its contents. Devol later determined that his ideas were used to create proximity sensors for anti-aircraft artillery shells. This technology dramatically improved the accuracy of those shells since they would now explode when the sensor detected the presence of an airplane. Previously the operator would have to set a time fuse based on an estimate of the plane's distance.
[edit] Other work
Devol was also part of the team that developed the first commercial use of microwave oven technology, the Speedy Weeny which automatically cooked and dispensed hotdogs in places such as Grand Central Station.
After a short stint as eastern sales manager of electronics products for RCA, which he felt "wasn't his ball of wax", he left to develop some ideas which led eventually to the patent application for the first industrial robot. In 1946, Devol applied for a patent on a magnetic recording system for controlling machines a general playback device for machines.[2]
[edit] Unimation
Devol wasn't thinking about robots in the 1940s he was thinking about manipulators and his patent on magnetic recording devices. He felt the world was ready for new ideas as he saw the introduction of automation into factories about this time. But with the development of the computer in the late 1940s and the invention of the transistor, all the ingredients for an industrial robot were available.[3]
With all this background, George Devol worked on his invention. In 1954, he applied for patent No. 2,988,237 for Universal Automation or Unimation, coining the word (at the suggestion of his wife, Evelyn) to define the product much as George Eastman had coined Kodak.[4]
When he filed the patent for a programmable method for transferring articles between different parts of a factory, he wrote:
The present invention makes available for the first time a more or less general purpose machine that has universal application to a vast diversity of applications where cyclic control is desired.
In 1961, his patent was granted and Devol tried to find a company willing to give him financial backing to develop this programmable articles transfer system and he talked with almost every major corporation in the United States in his search. After tireless searching Devol was put in touch with Manning, Maxwell and Moorehead in Connecticut, whose chief of engineering in the aircraft products division was Joseph Engelberger. Engleberger was very interested, and Devol agreed to sell the company his patent and some future patents in the field.[3] Just as this decision was being made, however, Dresser Industries bought the company and couldn't see the need for an aircraft division, industrial robot patents notwithstanding.
Engleberger and Devol looked around for a backer to buy out that division and came up with Consolidated Diesel Electronic (Condec), which agreed to put up the financing and hte continued development of the robot. This new division was called Unimation, and Joseph Engleberger became its president.[5]
In 1961, the first Unimate robot was shipped from Danbury, Connecticut.[6] General Motors used the machine for die casting handling and spot welding.[7] Although Devol personally sold the first robot to General Motors in 1960 and installed in 1961 in a plant in Trenton, New Jersey to lift hot pieces of metal from a die-casting machine and stack them, initially it was the European companies that saw the necessity for large purchases like Fiat.[3]
Five million dollars was spent to develop the first Unimates. In 1966, after many years of market surveys and field tests, production began. Their first robot is a material handling robot and is soon followed by robots for welding and other applications.
In 1975, Unimation showed its first profit. Then by 1978, the Puma (Programmable Universal Machine for Assembly) robot is developed by Unimation from Vicarm (developed by Victor Scheinman) techniques and with support from General Motors.
[edit] Later work
Devol later obtained patents on visual and tactile sensors for robots, non-refillable containers, and magnetostrictive manipulators or microrobotics, a field he created. Microrobotics is based on the scientific principle that if you take a piece of metal and excite it with a high frequency voltage, it will grow by an absolute fixed amount. This is true for nickel and other materials in that family. Using this, Devol believed it is possible to make a robot.
[edit] References
- ^ HE BROUGHT THE ROBOT TO LIFE (BARNABY J. FEDER) New York Times March 21, 1982
- ^ David Buckley.net - History Makers - Time Line of History Making Mobile Robots
- ^ a b c Handbook of Design, Manufacturing and Automation by By Richard C. Dorf and Andrew Kusiak (Wiley-IEEE) Page 260 ISBN 0471552186
- ^ vidyaonline.org - robot
- ^ Robotics Research Group - The first robot:"Ultimate"
- ^ Automation Hall of Fame - Devol
- ^ Used-Robots.com - The History and Benefits of Industrial Robots
