UNIMATE
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Robots & AI
UNIMATE, the first industrial robot, began work at General Motors. Obeying
step-by-step commands stored on a magnetic drum, the 4,000-pound arm sequenced
and stacked hot pieces of die-cast metal.
The brainchild of Joe Engelberger and George Devol, UNIMATE originally
automated the manufacture of TV picture tubes.
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IBM 1401
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Computers
According to Datamation magazine, IBM had an 81.2-percent share of the computer
market in 1961, the year in which it introduced the 1400 Series. The 1401
mainframe, the first in the series, replaced the vacuum tube with smaller,
more reliable transistors and used a magnetic core memory.
Demand called for more than 12,000 of the 1401 computers, and the machine's
success made a strong case for using general-purpose computers rather than
specialized systems.
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RTL integrated circuit
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Components
Fairchild Camera and Instrument Corp. invented the resistor-transistor logic
(RTL) product, a set/reset flip-flop and the first integrated circuit available
as a monolithic chip.
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