Science and Industry

on the World ‘Today

WITH all the discussion of automation, one point seems to have been largely overlooked. In a number of fields, automatic controls do not merely cut costs. They also make possible production processes that otherwise could not be attempted.

Automatic sensing devices can operate under conditions deadly to man: in the presence of poisonous gases, intense heat, or atomic radiation. Automatic controls can keep track of machine movements so complicated that human machinetenders cannot follow them. The shapes of parts in new aircraft, for example, are so complex that they present enormous problems even to skilled machinists. This results from making parts perform several functions to save weight and is one reason that the price of aircraft keeps rising.

How automatic controls can solve this problem is demonstrated in a new 200-ton milling machine that Convair is building in San Diego under an Air Force contract. This monster will boast four cutting heads, a 20-foot slide, and a rotary table. Convair quotes one tool engineer: “This concept makes possible as many as eighteen different motions with one machine — an operation so complicated that no human could do it and still maintain quality.”

Previous automatic machine tools have been either specially built one-purpose tools or copying tools that require expensive models or templates to follow. The single-purpose tools require a long production run to pay off the investment. The copying type of tool necessitates a lot of preparation for each new job, tends to be slow, has limited accuracy, and needs the attention of a skilled operator.

Convair’s milling machine, however, will be used for any job that will fit it, and the change-over from one job to the next will be quick and easy. It will run at high speed, with great accuracy, and completely on its own.

The secret is in the ingenious control system used. Convair’s machine will be operated by signals recorded on magnetic tape: changing from one job to another will be little more difficult than changing tunes on a tape player. The tape can be run repeatedly, and the parts turned out will be identical. Design changes can be made by splicing in a new length. Tapes can be duplicated to run other similar machines if desired.

The magnetic tape is turned out by an electronic computer which takes numbers fed into it and translates them into electrical pulse signals. The numbers represent the distances and times each cutter head must operate to turn a line on a blueprint into a cut in metal.

This system, called numerical control, opens up the advantages of automation to whole new segments of American industry. Its development has been largely carried out by the Electrical Engineering Department of Massachusetts Institute of Technology. There, at the Servomechanisms Laboratory in Cambridge, engineers built a pioneer control system for a conventional milling machine and proved its accuracy and reliability by thousands of hours of operation.

Million-dollar machine

Numerical controls make automatic machines more economical by enabling them to be used on a wide variety of jobs. They are still expensive, however: the Convair machine will cost over a million dollars. Fortunately, the really costly part of a numerical control system is the electronic computer, not the actual machine controls, and one computer can turn out tapes for many machines. Already custom computing services are available that will make tapes from blueprints on order. Eventually shops will be able to buy or rent tapes for standard cuts, and subcontractors will receive tapes with their orders.

Numerical controls offer the prospect of an extension of automation’s savings not only into relatively short-run industries, such as aircraft, but also into medium-sized and even small metalworking shops of all sorts. It also seems likely that the giants of mass production will find that numerical control offers great savings in diemaking — which might result in more frequent model changes.

In a sense, automation imposes its own form of guaranteed annual wage on the user: the interest and amortization of the investment. This wage must be paid as long as the machine is owned, whether the plant is closed down or running full blast. The break-even point moves to a higher level of production, and the penalty for dropping below it is likely to be much heavier than with conventional machines. It takes careful scheduling to keep production on an even keel.

In the shoe industry, leasing machinery is an established practice, and an official of the United Shoe Machinery Company has suggested it as a way that smaller companies can by-pass the big investment automation requires. Leasing, he pointed out to a conference sponsored by the Air Force and Stanford Research Institute, is particularly attractive under certain conditions. These include situations where machines are complex and require unusual servicing; where machines are extremely expensive and tie up capital; where machines are used only intermittently (rents can be tied to production); where machines must be adapted to product changes; and where technology is changing rapidly.

Frontiers of thought

M.I.T. has been in the forefront not only in the application of automation but in the development of the basic communications theory on which automatic controls are based. Much of this work was done by the noted mathematician Norbert Wiener, who has also been instrumental in bringing the whole subject to public attention.

Professor Wiener has deliberately kept aloof from the commercial application of automation in order to remain a disinterested critic and commentator. He believes that the full automation of industry is further off than most people realize. There is much pioneering still to be done. Improved instruments are needed for more delicate control of automatic processes. New mathematical concepts will have to be formulated. Now thinking is required to build truly automatic factories. Only a war, he believes, could automatize industry overnight.

On this basis, Professor Wiener fears that automation is being oversold. If companies rush into automation prematurely, before either the machines or the men are ready, the resulting disillusionment could set back the whole concept for years.

For much the same reasons, Professor Wiener urges a cautious approach by private investors who see in automation a chance for future profits. Only the big companies can afford the expensive exploration that this stage of automation involves— and the inevitable losses. Specialized engineering firms, like those that cluster around M.I.T. in Cambridge, are active in the development of automation and will undoubtedly benefit by it. But the work of this type of company, Wiener points out, is little publicized, and as a rule the public is not given an opportunity to invest in them.

As for the small engineering firms that are crowding into the automation field, some are technically sound, others are not. Many, Wiener believes, will fall by the wayside. Unfortunately the average investor lacks the information — if not the skill — to pick the winners. Automation stocks are as much a speculation as uranium shares. Experts may venture into the field and make a killing, but even they must be prepared to lose. In any case, says Dr. Wiener, look out for the automation exploiters who smell gold in the hills.

One Wiener view may not he shared by many of his colleagues: “After all, we have not allowed radio, TV, or aviation to run hog wild: we have set up licensing procedures and regulatory boards. We can’t allow automatization to run hog wild either. There can be no such thing as completely uninterrupted free enterprise in these fields — history makes it clear that such forces will be regulated. I expect that some form of government inspection and licensing will be required eventually, regardless of which party is in power.”

Professor Wiener also takes a firm stand on nomenclature. “Automation,” he says, is barbarous; let it be “automatization” or nothing.

Victory over polio

The announcement of the success of the Salk polio vaccine was a unique event in the annals of American science. The crowds of reporters, newsreel men, TV cameras, and photographers gathered at Ann Arbor created an atmosphere of excitement hitherto reserved for the World Series, the discovery of a new screen star, or the return of a victorious general.

Some may deplore this and prefer the traditional paper slipped quietly into a learned journal. A more accurate view is that the American people must be growing up when we can find an important medical achievement as newsworthy as one in sports or war.

That the Salk vaccine is a notable victory in man’s fight against disease is obvious. It is also an unusually clear example of how money invested in medical research pays off in dollars and cents as well as in the relief of human suffering. Since 1938, the National Foundation for Infantile Paralysis has spent $18.2 million for research. In the same time it has spent. $203.6 million to help treat and rehabilitate polio patients.

Assuming that the vaccine will reduce paralytic polio to the vanishing point, the entire cost of the research will be equaled every year and a half by the amount saved in medical care — a 67 per cent dividend on the investment.

The outcome emphasizes the fact that medical victories today are won by teams of researchers, not by the dedicated isolation of a Jenner or a Pasteur. The National Foundation played the part of a general staff, coördinating and helping to plan the work of scientists in many institutions. A whole series of important discoveries by at least eight researchers made possible the ultimate development of the vaccine by Dr. Jonas E. Salk.

The story is not yet finished. Thousands of polio patients are still undergoing treatment and rehabilitation. More research must be done on how long the vaccine gives immunity. The search for a cure for the disease will continue.

The National Foundation may turn to other fields of medical research. One which seems highly appropriate for an organization founded by Franklin Delano Roosevelt is the study of the crushing blow that the brain suffers when an artery is blocked or breaks. Ten years, to the day, before the success of the polio vaccine was announced, such a cerebral accident killed President Roosevelt.

Sea salt and tooth decay

The salt pans that once were a common sight along our coasts may be due for a comeback. Dr. James H. Shaw of the Harvard School of Dental Medicine says that fluoride in table salt may reduce tooth decay as effectively as fluoride in drinking water. Ordinary American table salt doesn’t contain fluoride, but salt evaporated from the sea does.

Dr. Shaw bases his views on the amount of fluoride found in teeth in India, where the people use sea salt and have only one-third as much tooth decay as in the United States. Dr. Shaw points out, however, that there may be something else in the sea salt that inhibits decay.

With fluoridation a bitter topic of debate in many American communities, both sides will probably seize on this piece of research to bolster their arguments.

NEW PRODUCTS

Mylar, a new plastic film developed by Du Pont, which is extra strong, waterand alcohol-proof, and resistant to scratching. Du Pont suggests its use for laminating to wallboard or furniture, and for electrical insulation and magnetic tapes for sound recordings. The film does not shrink, stretch, or grow brittle with age.

Filastic, a non-woven web of rubber fibers. Stronger than foam or sponge rubber, it is highly elastic and can be made with a pore structure that will pass vapors but block liquids. Developed jointly by research scientists of American Viscose and Arthur D. Little, it is expected to be used in the manufacture of rainwear, inner soles, upholstery, and elastic garments and bandages.

Lampreys — a kind of eel — may provide a new drug. Dr. George I. Shinowara of Ohio State University has found that lampreys in certain rivers secrete a powerful and-coagulant in their mouth glands. The substance, which has not been isolated, keeps the blood of fishes flowing as the eels suck it.