With the start of industrial revolution always people have tried to adapt the most new technology available. The whole history has witnessed the uprising of Technological Evolution. It’s not very clear which numerically controlled machine tool was introduced in the market first. Many firms claim to be among the first and the earliest to introduce the numerically controlled machines but most records were destroyed or lost as the companies were closed due to financial weaknesses or entered into the merger and acquisitions and many among the people who were involved at the dawn of the Numerically Controlled Tool’s age have left the industry. In the final technological analysis, when Numerically Controlled Machine Tools appeared it had forever revolutionised the way usual operation of the existent machine tools.

Many of the sources agree that in the year 1949, the U.S. Air Force commissioned the best technologically advanced institute Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) The Servomechanism Laboratory to begin the much needed research and development on the newly introduced Numerically Controlled machine tools. The advanced machines would enable the Air Force to operate more effectively and also could produce complex spares and other parts for military air craft on a repeatable basis and not only military application they would be really helpful in automotive and aircraft industries. In 1950 the actual research began at MIT. In the year 1952, MIT demonstrated a prototype or a sample of a Numerically Controlled machine tool. The demonstration of the prototype of the NC Tool really impressed the company Giddings & Lewis Machine Tools and they had placed a subsequent order for 40'×20' dies for a press being built for the US Air Force reinforced the benefit of building an NC mill. The size of the dies and the tolerances levels were very low compared to the contemporary tools available as required by the Air Force. These improvements in the accuracy levels were impossible if the tasks were performed by conventional means. So the chance the chance for machining errors is very astonishingly reduced and the high accuracy levels were attained. In April 1953, G&L joined with MIT and General Electric Co. to build a novel digital control system named Numericord, using a magnetic-tape playback system GE was developing with the help of Numerically Controlled Machine Tools.

That was the starting of implementation of numerical techniques in actual manufacturing sector, and after that we saw a revolution in the machining tools and manufacturing industry. The modern approach is Computer Numerically Control Technique be it in the automobile sector or the aviation sector or even in other electrical or mechanical core manufacturing sector. The CNC machines were born especially to meet the need for quality control methodology, repeatability and efficient cost-effectiveness. Out of the birth struggles of the 1950s arose a new way of controlling machinery that has become indispensable in this modern world of technological upraise with the development of more efficient computing facilities in the market.

John Machine is the author of this article on Machine Tools. Find more information on Vertical Machining Centers here.