Unimate which worked in a General Motors assembly line in 1961 has what distinction in the world of business?
"Unimate was inducted into the Robot Hall of Fame. Fictional robots called ""Unimate"", designed by the character ""Alan von Neumann, Jr."", appeared in comic books from DC Comics. Unimate Unimate was the first industrial robot, which worked on a General Motors assembly line at the Inland Fisher Guide Plant in Ewing Township, New Jersey, in 1961. It was invented by George Devol in the 1950s using his original patent filed in 1954 and granted in 1961 (). The patent begins: The present invention relates to the automatic operation of machinery, particularly the handling apparatus, and to automatic control apparatus suited"
"Plant in Ewing Township, New Jersey in 1961 to lift hot pieces of metal from a die-casting machine and stack them. Soon companies such as Chrysler, Ford, and Fiat saw the necessity for large Unimate purchases. The introduction of robotics to the manufacturing process effectively transformed the automotive industry, with Chrysler and the Ford Motor Company soon following General Motors' lead and installing Unimates in their manufacturing facilities. The rapid adoption of the technology also provided Unimation with a working business model: after selling the first Unimate at a $35,000 loss, as demand increased, the company was able to begin"
"closed that year. Finding himself jobless but with a business partner and an idea, Engelberger co-founded Unimation with Devol, creating the world's first robotics company. In 1957, he also founded Consolidated Controls Corporation. As president of Unimation, Engelberger collaborated with Devol to engineer and produce an industrial robot under the brand name Unimate. The first Unimate robotic arm was installed at a General Motors Plant in Ewing Township, New Jersey, in 1961. The introduction of robotics to the manufacturing process effectively transformed the automotive industry, with Chrysler and the Ford Motor Company soon following General Motors' lead and installing Unimates"
"Unimation Unimation was the world's first robotics company. It was founded in 1962 by Joseph F. Engelberger and George Devol and was located in Danbury, Connecticut. Devol had already applied for a patent an industrial robotic arm in 1954; was issued in 1961. Devol collaborated with Engelberger, who served as president of the company, to engineer and produce an industrial robot under the brand name Unimate. They introduced their new robot in 1961 at a trade show at Chicago's Cow Palace. The first Unimate prototypes were controlled by vacuum tubes used as digital switches though later versions used transistors. Further,"
"to be done by the robot. The first production Unimate was donated to the Smithsonian Institution in 1971 after being used for 100,000 hours during its 10 years of continuous operation at the Ewing plant. In December 1992, General Motors announced that what was then known as the Delphi Interior & Lighting Systems plant would be closed in 1993, which would mean that the 2,200 people working there would be out of work. In September 1993, William D. Hurley of Independent Component Systems announced that a deal had been reached to acquire the plant from General Motors, as part of"
"was converted to return to production of auto components. In 1961, the facility became the first commercial user in the United States to use a programmable industrial robot to replace human workers, installing the Unimate automated hydraulic arm developed by George Devol and Joseph Engelberger. It carried units of aluminum door handles and other automotive components weighing as much as into cooling pools; such units had just been die cast from molten metal, and the use of robots eliminated the risks to employees of handling extremely hot metal pieces. A task previously performed by three shifts of employees was converted"
"a unique rotating drum memory system with data parity controls. In 1960, Devol personally sold the first Unimate robot, which was shipped in 1961 to General Motors. GM first used the machine for die casting handling and spot welding. The first Unimate robot was installed at GM's Inland Fisher Guide Plant in Ewing Township, New Jersey in 1961 to lift hot pieces of metal from a die-casting machine and stack them. Soon companies such as Chrysler, Ford, and Fiat saw the necessity for large Unimate purchases. Approximately $5 million was spent to develop the first Unimate. In 1966, after many"
"parts available off-the-shelf in the late 1950s, such as digital encoders, were not adequate for the Unimate, so with Devol's guidance and a team of skilled engineers, Unimation designed and machined practically every part in the first Unimates. They also invented a variety of new technologies, including a unique rotating drum memory system with data parity controls. In 1960, Devol personally sold the first Unimate robot, which was shipped in 1961 to General Motors. GM first used the machine for die casting handling and spot welding of car bodies. The first Unimate robot was installed at GM's Inland Fisher Guide"
"George Devol George Charles Devol Jr. (February 20, 1912 – August 11, 2011) was an American inventor known for developing Unimate, the first material handling robot employed in industrial production work. Born in Louisville, Kentucky in 1912, Devol was interested from boyhood in all things electrical and mechanical such as boats, airplanes, and engines. Choosing to forego higher education, in 1932 Devol went into business, forming United Cinephone to produce variable area recording directly onto film for the new sound motion pictures (""talkies""). However, he later learned that companies like RCA and Western Electric were working in the same area,"
"programmable robot was built by George Devol in 1954 and was named the Unimate. It was sold to General Motors in 1961 where it was used to lift pieces of hot metal from die casting machines at the Inland Fisher Guide Plant in the West Trenton section of Ewing Township, New Jersey. Robots have replaced humans in performing repetitive and dangerous tasks which humans prefer not to do, or are unable to do because of size limitations, or which take place in extreme environments such as outer space or the bottom of the sea. There are concerns about the increasing"
"from an assembly line and welding these parts on auto bodies, a dangerous task for workers, who might be poisoned by toxic fumes or lose a limb if they were not careful. The original Unimate consisted of a large computer-like box, joined to another box and was connected to an arm, with systematic tasks stored in a drum memory. The Unimate also appeared on ""The Tonight Show"" hosted by Johnny Carson on which it knocked a golf ball into a cup, poured a beer, waved the orchestra conductor's baton and grasped an accordion and waved it around. In 2003 the"
"years of market surveys and field tests, full-scale production began in Connecticut. Unimation's first production robot was a materials handling robot and was soon followed by robots for welding and other applications. In 1975, Unimation showed its first profit. In 1978, the PUMA (Programmable Universal Machine for Assembly) robot was developed by Unimation from Vicarm (Victor Scheinman) and with support from General Motors. In 2005, Popular Mechanics magazine selected Devol's Unimate as one of the Top 50 Inventions of the Past 50 Years. Devol later obtained patents on visual and tactile sensors for robots, coaxial connectors, non-refillable containers, and magnetostrictive"
"in their manufacturing facilities. The rapid adoption of the technology also provided Unimation with a working business model: after selling the first Unimate at a $35,000 loss, as demand increased, the company was able to begin building the robotic arms for significantly less and thus began to turn a substantial profit. Over the next two decades, the Japanese took the lead by investing heavily in robots to replace people performing certain tasks. In Japan, Engelberger was widely hailed as a key player in the postwar ascendancy of Japanese manufacturing quality and efficiency. In 1966, Engelberger and a Unimate robot appeared"
"produced numerous peripherals and consumer electronic products such as the Chessmate, a chess computer based around a MOS 6504 chip, released in 1978. In December 2007, when Tramiel was visiting the Computer History Museum in Mountain View, California for the 25th anniversary of the Commodore 64, he was asked why he called his company Commodore. He said: ""I wanted to call my company General, but there's so many Generals in the U.S.: General Electric, General Motors. Then I went to Admiral, but that was taken. So I wind up in Berlin, Germany, with my wife, and we were in a"
"manipulators or ""micro robotics"", a field he created. Devol died on August 11, 2011, aged 99, at his home in Wilton, Connecticut. He was survived by two daughters, two sons, five grandchildren and five great-grandchildren. His grave is in Bald Hill Cemetery (Wilton, Ct). George Devol George Charles Devol Jr. (February 20, 1912 – August 11, 2011) was an American inventor known for developing Unimate, the first material handling robot employed in industrial production work. Born in Louisville, Kentucky in 1912, Devol was interested from boyhood in all things electrical and mechanical such as boats, airplanes, and engines. Choosing to"
"Unimed S.A. Unimed is a Swiss company active in the biomedical engineering field. It fabricates and sells a large range of medical and diagnostics needles. Its headquarters are in Lausanne, Switzerland. Since 1958, its logo represents a medical needle hub and was created by the founder Mr. Karl Schoenholzer. In 1936, Mr. Pierre-Jean Guisan, son of a medical doctor and nephew of the famous Swiss general Guisan, started the production of hypodermic needles in the cellar of a building on Avenue de Cour, Lausanne, Switzerland. After a while, he found more appropriate production facilities on Rue de Genève, Lausanne. The"
"the focus of the brothers from this point on. Towards the end of the First World War the company was awarded a contract to build the Liberty aero engine in response to Walter's offer to support the war effort. In 1926 the company name changed to the Marmon Motor Company. It became known for building high quality and reliable cars, full of revolutionary features the most outstanding being the use of aluminium for the car's body, an integrated rear trunk and hinged doors. He also invented the duplex downdraft manifold and was a pioneer in the use of aluminum, which"
"1959, a 2700 pound Unimate prototype was installed at the General Motors die-casting plant in Trenton, New Jersey. The Unimate 1900 series became the very first produced robotic arm for die-casting. During a very short period of time, it had produced at least 450 robotic arms were being used. It still remains one of the most significant contributions in the last one hundred years. As years went by, technology seemed to evolve, helping to build better robotic arms. Not only companies invented different robotic arms, but so did colleges. In 1969, Victor Scheinman from Stanford University invented the Stanford arm,"
"Unimat The Unimat covers a range commercially sold machines intended for machining and metalworking for model making hobbyists manufactured by the Emco company. The machines enable the user to have a drill press, lathe and milling machine. Most of the Unimat range is no longer in production, but the smallest Unimat 1 and its variants is now produced by the Cool Tool Gmbh. This model of the Unimat 1 has many plastic parts. It is capable of working mostly wood and plastics. This model of the Unimat 1 has many plastic parts and plastic machining cross slides. It is capable"
"company was owned by General Motors, its logo featured the phrase ""Product of General Motors"", and later renamed to ""Home Environment Division of General Motors"". The company claims firsts including: During the years that Frigidaire was owned by General Motors, it was very competitive in the automatic clothes-washing-machine business. Frigidaire engineer Kenneth Sisson, also credited with the design of the incrementing timer used on clothes washers and dishwashers for years to come, designed the Frigidaire automatic washer with the Unimatic mechanism in the late 1930s. Production of the first Frigidaire automatic clothes washers was halted due to World War II"
"subsequent generations of robotics researchers such as Rodney Brooks, Hans Moravec and Mark Tilden. Modern incarnations of Walter's ""turtles"" may be found in the form of BEAM robotics. The first digitally operated and programmable robot was invented by George Devol in 1954 and was ultimately called the Unimate. This ultimately laid the foundations of the modern robotics industry. Devol sold the first Unimate to General Motors in 1960, and it was installed in 1961 in a plant in Trenton, New Jersey to lift hot pieces of metal from a die casting machine and stack them. Devol's patent for the first"
"ACMAT ACMAT (""Ateliers de Construction Mécanique de L'Atlantique"", also known as ALM-ACMAT), (since 22 May 2006, ACMAT is a wholly owned subsidiary of Renault Trucks) is a French producer of cross-country and tactical military vehicles since 1958. Known for their reliability, simplicity, ruggedness and their 80% (over 3,500) commonality of parts across the entire product line, these vehicles were originally targeted at African and Asian countries who could not afford more expensive vehicles. The ACMAT company built their vehicles based on standardisation, commonality of parts and components, and on interchangeability; parts are interchangeable with vehicles built 30 years ago. Parts"
"building the robotic arms for significantly less and thus began to turn a substantial profit. The PUMA (Programmable Universal Machine for Assembly"", or Programmable Universal Manipulation Arm"") was developed by Victor Scheinman at Unimation in 1978. Initially developed for General Motors, the PUMA was based on the earlier Vicarm design Scheinman invented while at Stanford University. Unimation produced PUMAs for years until being purchased by Westinghouse (ca. 1980), and later by Swiss company Stäubli (1988). Unimation Unimation was the world's first robotics company. It was founded in 1962 by Joseph F. Engelberger and George Devol and was located in Danbury,"
"Unison Industries Unison Industries, LLC, headquartered Jacksonville, Florida, is involved in the design, manufacture, and integration of electrical and mechanical components and systems for aircraft engines and airframes. Frederick Sontag holds a B.S. in physics from Harvey Mudd College, an M.S. in physics from the University of Nevada, and an M.B.A. from Harvard Business School. He worked for several corporations during the 1970s before finding himself unemployed. Sontag invested his life savings in 1980 to secure an $8 million loan for a leveraged buyout of ""Slick Electro"", an aircraft ignition manufacturer in Rockford, Illinois. One of Sontag's first initiatives was"
"bankruptcy in 2015. EveryWare Global was renamed The Oneida Group in 2017. Oneida has had a variety of manufacturing facilities and capabilities throughout its existence. In addition to tableware, the company started out by manufacturing silk, traps, and chains. It gradually ceased these enterprises as they became less profitable for the company. In 1916, Oneida opened its first international factory in Niagara Falls, Ontario. During World War II, Oneida purchased a factory in Canastota, New York, to manufacture army trucks, aircraft survival kits, and jet engine parts. Throughout the 1960s and 70s, Oneida's workforce grew from 2,000 to 3,000 workers,"
"model – the Sextet. The Sextet used a Continental side-valve six-cylinder, modified by National engineers with an overhead valve head. The company was merged to form Associated Motor Industries in 1922 along with Dixie Flyer and Jackson. Associated was renamed the National Motors Corporation in 1923, and few cars were made until the company ceased production in 1924. National had the most enviable and successful career of all of the American pre-World War I race cars. For instance, in 1911, in a combination of road races, speedway races, hill climbs and dirt track races, they won a total of 84"
"Devol's invention was re-purposed as a machine control that would eventually become the ""brains"" of the Unimate robot. In the 1940s, Devol wasn't thinking about robots. Instead, he was focusing on 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 during this time. In 1954, Devol applied for patent on Programmed Article Transfer that introduced the concept of ""Universal Automation"" or Unimation; was issued in 1954. At the suggestion of Devol's wife, Evelyn, the word ""Unimate"" was coined to define the product, much"
"business under the name of Hunter Engineering. Lee Hunter also laid the foundation for a global distribution base for Hunter products. In 1955 Hunter developed a new wheel alignment system called 'Lite-A-Line,' which became the industry standard. In 1962, Hunter's 'Tune-Align' became the first mechanical alignment system capable of compensating for wheel run-out, a major factor affecting wheel alignment precision. Hunter Engineering continued to expand its export markets and in 1964 was named by the U.S. Department of Commerce as a winner of the E-Award for excellence in the development of export trade. Nearly 50 years after Lee Hunter founded"
"the small family car segment. By 1977 the plant was employing 7,000 people. This was a period of rapid automation in car production, and as a new plant Douai was more highly automated than most. It was perhaps a reflection of the fact that all the jobs at the plant were then new jobs, that the robots were viewed with some affection by some members of the workforce. At the end of the body assembly shop much of the main welding together of the pressed panels was undertaken by a team of four ""Unimate"" robots christened, by their human colleagues,"
"the medical device and diagnostics industries. Currently Unimed serves more than 1,500 clients in 70 countries. Contract manufacturing has become a major business for the company, which is producing a large number of finished and semi-finished products for its clients who eventually place them on the market under their own brand name. Unimed S.A. Unimed is a Swiss company active in the biomedical engineering field. It fabricates and sells a large range of medical and diagnostics needles. Its headquarters are in Lausanne, Switzerland. Since 1958, its logo represents a medical needle hub and was created by the founder Mr. Karl"
"could make a similar model of their own. However, the outbreak of World War I in 1914 stopped the project and presented itself as a turning point in road transport history. Mechanical transport was seen to work, proving its vast potential beyond doubt to forward-thinking companies such as Scammell. George Scammell's great nephew, Lt Col Alfred Scammell, was injured and invalided out of the army, and he was able to apply the practical experience he had gained during the war and began developing the articulated six wheeler. Percy G Hugh, chief designer, conceived the idea and at the 1920 Commercial"
"12, 1929 ""St. Louis Post-Dispatch"" newspaper article, reprinted in the April 1929 issue of ""The Commonwealther"", noted ""[t]he Commonwealth, largely because of its one-piece castings, does business with railroads all over the world. It is commonly thought not to have a competitor in the production of a one-piece frame for locomotives and coaches, a feat of casting that has at once made its business unique and added immensely to the safety of railroad travel."" The importance of Commonwealth Steel to the railroad industry was not overlooked by the industry and was underscored when two major locomotive companies, American Locomotive Company"
"Uniq plc Uniq plc (formerly Unigate plc) was a British food manufacturer. Listed on the London Stock Exchange and once a constituent of the FTSE 100 Index, it was taken over by Irish foods conglomerate Greencore in 2011. The company was formed in 1959 by the merger of the UK's largest dairy products company United Dairies, with Cow & Gate, earlier known as the West Surrey Central Dairy Company, forming Unigate. On merger, aside from its extensive milk home delivery network, its range of food products included Cow & Gate baby foods (now part of Royal Numico) and Farmer’s Wife"