The History of Automation Book 1

A guided walk through the history of automation, written in plain language.

The History of Automation moves through waterworks, water clocks, mills, steam engines, factories, and later industrial control. Each part stays with the machines of its own time. An earlier device is not treated as the parent of a later one unless the connection can be shown. A water clock is not a sensor. A mill is not an early robot. A likeness is named as a likeness.

The walk includes ancient irrigation, water-powered machines, automata, mechanical clocks, steam engines, textile machinery, interchangeable parts, assembly lines, electrical controls, computers, programmable logic controllers, industrial robots, and machine learning in industry. These are not lined up as one invention handing the work to the next. Ancient engineering does not lead into a medieval machine, and a medieval machine does not lead into a smart factory or an automated warehouse.

The book is for curious readers, students, teachers, and people who work around manufacturing, maintenance, and industrial equipment and want the history of automation without a slogan. You do not need an engineering degree to begin.

Andrew Miller, founder of Automation History, spent more than a decade working around industrial automation, robotics, maintenance, and operations, then went back to the patents, the books, and the machines. That shop experience is why the later chapters can tell a controller from a sales claim. It is not a reason to treat ancient machines as the first draft of a modern plant.

This is a longer reading than the free articles on Automation History. It is not the evidence for those articles. The sources stay on the site. The book is not a collection of firsts, and it does not end by announcing that we have arrived at an automated world.