BLUEPRINT TO PRODUCT—BY COMPUTER
1957The NewsletterJ. H. Bradley Read the scan at ETOL (PDF) →Read from the scan by machine and not corrected: headlines and words can be misread, and a caption or advert can run into the text. For anything you quote, read the scan.
THE control of machine tools by automatic means, now in its infancy, promises to be a development of greater significance than nuclear energy.
The essential of the matter is that motions of the tool— cutting, stamping, polishing etc.—are reported to an electronic computer, which guides them in a set pattern.
This pattern is cut so as to produce the required article, the material being passed from one tool (or from one station, in a transfer machine) to another as necessary.
All instructions are fed in as punched paper tape, punched cards, magnetic tape. pulses from a teleprinter line, or eventually as mere blueprints!
Probably blueprints will always be read by a central service computer, which will issue instructions by teleprinter to ‘slave’ computers all over the world for recording on magnetic tape.
Enormous complexity and cost Blueprint readers must be of enormous complexity and cost, simply because no known type of computer can work in terms of human concepts like lines and angles, but only in terms of points, Instructions will specify that each tool must start from a certain point and follow such-and-such a curve for such-andsuch a distance.
Alternatively various points will be specified through which the tool must pass, and the computer will fill in the gaps in a reasonable manner.
Each piece of work is measured immediately the operation, or set of operations, is finished, before any other piece of work is put through that stage.
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In this way corrections can be made for the wear of tools, and badly worn tools can be replaced automatically.
Substandard work or breakdowns will,stop the machine and summon the service engineers.
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