- Start
- Jan 1, 196150% CONFIDENCEfrom the source
General Motors Installs the First Unimate Industrial Robot
- In 1961 the Unimate, the first industrial robot, worked on a General Motors assembly line at the Inland Fisher Guide Plant in Ewing Township, New Jersey[2][3]
- George Devol invented it (patent filed 10 December 1954, granted 13 June 1961) and founded Unimation with Joseph Engelberger, the first robot-manufacturing company[2][3]
- It was inducted into the Robot Hall of Fame in 2003[3]
Notable features
- A hydraulically actuated programmable manipulator arm with 5 degrees of freedom, differing from the simpler three-prismatic-link pick-and-place arm in Devol's 'Programmed Article Transfer' patent[3]
- It moved die castings from the line and welded them onto car bodies, a dangerous job[2][3]
- It weighed about 4,000 lb, had a hydraulic arm and magnetic drum memory, and cost $25,000[2][3]
- The original machine joined a large computer-like box to an arm, with its tasks stored in a drum memory; Devol's design was programmed by moving the gripper by hand and recording each position on the drum for playback, the point-to-point movement now standard in robot arms[3]
References 370% CONFIDENCE
The first entry is always the pin's source. Overall confidence is a weighted average of how firmly each reference supports the start and end times used above; a reference counts half as much for every 180 days older than the newest.
- [1]50%youtube.com/watch?v=75wAVYBt8_wyoutube.com· Posted Sep 15, 2026· Starts Jan 1, 1961 ✓· 33% of score
Wikipedia[3], the Henry Ford museum and Guinness World Records[2] all date the first Unimate installation to 1961, but none give a specific month or day.
- [2]75%First industrial production robot - Guinness World Recordsguinnessworldrecords.com· Added Sep 15, 2026· 33% of score
Guinness World Records independently corroborates 1961 as the year of the first Unimate installation.
- [3]85%Unimate - Wikipediaen.wikipedia.org· Added Sep 15, 2026· 33% of score
Wikipedia confirms the 1961 installation of the first Unimate at GM's Inland Fisher Guide plant in Ewing Township, New Jersey, matching the documentary's account almost verbatim.
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