ZAP’S FACTS!
ROBOTS & AI

The first real industrial robot started work in 1961.

Unimate was a 4,000-pound metal arm that lifted hot car parts at a General Motors factory in New Jersey.

2 min read
The first real industrial robot started work in 1961.
THE FULL STORY

In 1961 a giant metal arm named Unimate started work at a General Motors car plant in Ewing, New Jersey. It weighed about 4,000 pounds, took up most of a small room, and had one job: pick up scalding-hot pieces of die-cast metal as they came out of the machine and stack them neatly. Humans had been doing the work, and people sometimes lost fingers to it.

Unimate was the invention of George Devol and Joseph Engelberger. Devol patented the idea in 1954 and called it “programmed article transfer” - a fancy way of saying “moving things around on a schedule.” Engelberger was the businessman who pushed to actually build and sell it.

Companies were slow to buy in at first. Then Engelberger took Unimate on the Tonight Show with Johnny Carson, where the robot poured a beer and putted a golf ball. Suddenly people understood. Today there are more than 3 million industrial robots working in factories around the world.

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