2024年4月25日发(作者：)

第一篇：收音机 Radio Automation

Today they are everywhere. Production lines controlled by computers and operated by

robots. There's no chatter of assembly workers, just the whirr and click of machines.

In the mid-1940s, the workerless factory was still the stuff of science fiction. There

were no computers to speak of and electronics was primitive. Yet hidden away in the

English countryside was a highly automated production line called ECME, which

could turn out 1500 radio receivers a day with almost no help from human hands.

A

John Sargrove, the visionary engineer who developed the technology, was way ahead

of his time. For more than a decade, Sargrove had been trying to figure out how to

make cheaper radios. Automating the manufacturing process would help. But radios

didn't lend themselves to such methods: there were too many parts to fit together and

too many wires to solder. Even a simple receiver might have 30 separate components

and 80 hand-soldered connections. At every stage, things had to be tested and

inspected. Making radios required highly skilled labor-and lots of it.

B

In 1944, Sargrove came up with the answer. His solution was to dispense with most of

the fiddly bits by inventing a primitive chip-a slab of Bakelite with all the receiver's

electrical components and connections embedded in it. This was something that could

be made by machines, and he designed those too. At the end of the war, Sargrove built

an automatic production line, which he called ECME (electronic

circuit-making equipment), in a small factory in Effingham, Surrey.

ECME Line

C

An operator sat at one end of each ECME line, feeding in the plates. She didn't need

much skill, only quick hands. From now on, everything was controlled by electronic

switches and relays. First stop was the sandbluster, which roughened the surface of

the plastic so that molten metal would stick to it. The plates were then cleaned to

remove any traces of grit. The machine automatically checked that the surface was

rough enough before sending the plate to the spraying section. There, eight nozzles

rotated into position and sprayed molten zinc over both sides of the plate. Again, the

nozzles only began to spray when a plate was in place. The plate whizzed on. The

next stop was the milling machine, which ground away the surface layer of metal to

leave the circuit and other components in the grooves and recesses. Now the plate was

a composite of metal and plastic. It sped on to be lacquered and have its circuits tested.

By the time it emerged from the end of the line, robot hands had fitted it with sockets

to attach components such as valves and loudspeakers. When ECME was working flat

out, the whole process took 20 seconds.

D

ECME was astonishingly advanced. Electronic eyes, photocells that generated a small

current when a panel arrived, triggered each step in the operation, so avoiding

excessive wear and tear on the machinery The plates were automatically tested at each

stage as they moved along the conveyor. And if more than two plates in succession

were duds, the machines were automatically adjusted-or If necessary halted. In a

conventional factory, workers would test faulty- circuits and repair them. But

Sargrove's assembly line produced circuits so cheaply they Just threw away the faulty

ones. Sargrove's circuit board was even more astonishing for the time. It predated the

more familiar printed circuit, with wiring printed on aboard, yet was more

sophisticated. Its built-in components made it more like a modem chip.

E

When Sargrove unveiled his invention at a meeting of the British Institution of Radio

Engineers in February 1947, the assembled engineers were impressed. So was the

man from The Times. ECME, he reported the following day, "produces almost

without human labour, a complete radio receiving set. This new method of production

can be equally well applied to television and other forms of electronic apparatus."

F

The receivers had many advantages over their predecessors. Wit components they

were more robust. Robots didn't make the sorts of mistakes human assembly workers

sometimes did. "Wiring mistakes just cannot happen/ wrote Sargrove. No wires also

meant the radios were lighter and cheaper to ship abroad. And with no soldered wires

to come unstuck, the radios were more reliable. Sargrove pointed out that the circuit

boards didn't have to be flat. They could be curved, opening up the prospect of

building the electronics into the cabinet of Bakelite radios.

G

Sargrove was all for introducing this type of automation to other products. It could be

used to make more complex electronic equipment than radios, he argued. And even if

only part of a manufacturing process were automated, the savings would be

substantial. But while his invention was brilliant, his timing was bad. ECME was too

advanced for its own good. It was only competitive on huge production runs because

each new job meant retooling the machines. But disruption was frequent.

Sophisticated as it was, ECME still depended on old-fashioned electromechanical

relays and valves-which failed with monotonous regularity. The state of Britain's

economy added to Sargrove's troubles. Production was dogged by power cuts and

post-war shortages of materials. Sargrove's financial backers began to get cold feet.

H

There was another problem Sargrove hadn't foreseen. One of ECME's biggest

advantages-the savings on the cost of labour-also accelerated its downfall. Sargrove's

factory had two ECME production lines to produce the two circuits needed for each

radio. Between them these did what a thousand assembly workers would otherwise

have done. Human hands were needed only to feed the raw material in at one end and

plug the valves into their sockets and fit the loudspeakers at the other. After that, the

only job left was to fit the pair of Bakelite panels into a radio cabinet and check that it

worked.

I

Sargrove saw automation as the way to solve post-war labor shortages. With

somewhat Utopian idealism, he imagined his new technology would free people from

boring, repetitive jobs on the production line and allow them to do more interesting