ROSIE-THE-ROBOT, LABORATORY AUTOMATION AND THE SECOND-WORLD-WAR, 1941TO 1945

In our own day, managers often cite the gains in productivity as the p rimacy reason to automate laboratory operations. This is hardly new. D uring the second World War, shortages of skilled labor and materials w ere felt in the chemistry laboratory. Doing more with less was not a m atter of corporate policy; it was a matter of national survival. An am azing variety of automated devices were created between 1941 and 1945. Some were designed to save labor such as the automated distillation u nits seen in the petroleum industry or other organic chemistry laborat ories. Certain automatic titrators, polarographs, recording instrument s, and water stills also fall into this category. Other equipment was intended to conserve strategic materials, such as an all-glass constan t-rate reagent addition device. Still others improved assay performanc e by automating steps that were prone to human error. Although the tec hnology has changed, the reasons to automate have not. These devices w ere largely constructed by end users who were working alone. This fact illustrates something else that has not changed; while the driving fo rce in automation is not the hardware, it is the imagination. (C) 1997 John Wiley & Sons, Inc.