AUTOMATION

But thou, O Daniel, shut up the words, and seal the book, even to the time of the end. … and knowledge shall be increased.

—Daniel 12:4

340 Computerized Hospital Carts!

Hospitals, to meet the labor crunch, are turning increasingly to automation. An example is Fairfax Hospital in Falls Church, Va., where 60 carts, guided by signals from wires busily service six floors. Electronically, they buzz the elevator and glide aboard. Following dialed orders, they direct the elevator to a floor, get off and wait for an operator to wheel them where needed. The operator returns them by setting the dial for the basement. Upon reaching there, they stop for trays to be removed, head for a cart wash where they’re sterilized, and then go back for another load.

—The Wall Street Journal

341 When Cows Weren’t Milked

Harvard anthropologist William Howells tells about a near disaster for the residents of Cape Cod. The trouble began when boys shot the insulators off Cape Cod’s power line. Immediate confusion reigned. Few had water; the electric pumps stopped. No one could get gasoline—again, no pumps. Those who did have gasoline had no traffic lights to stop and go by. Some had to eat raw food, and some babies got colic because the electric ranges wouldn’t heat. Amidst all the pandemonium stood a herd of bawling cows, their udders near bursting point. The electric milkers couldn’t milk and apparently no one knew how to milk by hand.

If this is the state of gadgetized America, what might happen after a few nuclear bombs were dropped?

—James C. Hefley

342 Mechanical Mothers

When they start creating substitute mothers, maybe it is time to call a halt! Psychologist Harry F. Harlow of the University of Wisconsin has created a Mother-Machine that baby monkeys love.

This wire-frame machine is made of foam rubber, with terry cloth added for softness. The machine is equipped with a breast to provide milk, and a light-bulb heating system to give warmth.

The scientist Harlow reported that baby monkeys seem happy with “a mother soft, warm and tender, a mother with infinite patience, a mother available 24 hours a day, a mother that never scolded its infant and never struck its baby in anger.” He added that human babies might be able also to love such a substitute mother.

343 Who Needs Typists?

A typewriter has been patented which automatically writes up a stenographer’s notes. The notes are made on tape with a stenographic machine and then fed into a translator. The translator turns the symbols into standard English and stores the letters. The machine then operates the typewriter keys.

344 “Even Drinks It For You”

During the afternoon coffee break at our plant, a fellow put his dime in the coffee machine, pushed the button labeled “Coffee, Sugar and Double Cream” and waited expectantly. There was the usual whirl but no cup. And then the two jets went into action. Sweet cream poured out of one, and black coffee came from the other. They splashed onto the grill where the cup should have been and drizzled down the drain. The man stood there bug-eyed until the measured amount had been dispensed. Then he proclaimed philosophically, “That’s real automation, this thing even drinks it for you!”

—Reader’s Digest

345 Edison’s Mechanical Man

If we should visit Edison’s studio, in the early 20th century, the door of the studio would open, and in would walk a young gentlemen, who would greet us with a civil bow, and say, “Good morning,” and then take out his watch and tell us the time of the day. There is a phonograph within him.

He is a creature of springs and wires and coils, and Edison alone knows how. There are concealed batteries in the room, electric plates and buttons in the floor and in the furniture, and this creature is curiously geared to the whole astonishing mechanism.

346 Self-Help Project In Java

In the hills of Kulumprogo, Java, I saw an unforgettable sight. Like gnomes in some weird fairy tale, copper-red bodies were digging and delving in the mud at the bottom of a pit and scurrying like ants up a swaying bamboo ladder as long as a fire escape, with baskets of mud on their heads.

Those peasants were cutting a 40-mile long canal to bring water to their rice with nothing but their muscles, pickaxes, mat tocks, hammers and chisels. In a year they had advanced two and a half miles through the volcanic mountains.

I was there for the United Nations, and my first thought was that surely something could be done to give them bulldozers and dynamite. But a wise U. N. expert said, “Try to understand that this is their canal. For the first time they will have something which they will not owe to the moneylenders. Let them fulfill themselves and their purpose. When they believe in themselves they may believe in the help that we can give them.”

—Ritchie Calder

See also: Computerization ; Technology.