Dr. engelberger biography

Tributes for Joseph F. Engelberger have been pouring in from the robotics community since he died on the 1st of December this year. As an industry, we recognize that we owe a lot to the man who first brought robots to the manufacturing shopfloor, giving robotics a future in the world. But, what was it that sparked this seminal invention? Would robotics have been less successful if someone else had set the industry in motion? We take a look at Joseph Engelberger and ask what unique qualities made him justifiably "The Father of Modern Robotics”.

"The idea for [Unimate, the first industrial robot] came about … based on some of his dreams and aspirations from the writing of Asimov" said Engelberger's daughter, Gay, recently. "He just felt that [the robot] was the future."

The history of modern robotics seems to have been sparked by the imagination of Isaac Asimov. His three laws have driven the debate on robot ethics and his vivid depiction of autonomous servants have inspired generations of roboticists to further the dream of a robotic future. 

One such dreamer was Joseph F. Engelberger, who died on the 1st of December at the age of 90.

Tributes from the industry and beyond have poured in for this "father of modern robotics”. The Robotics Industries Association provided an interactive timeline of his life. The EE Times paid tribute, as did the Robotics Business Review. The wider media also recognized his importance and several leading international newspapers published in-depth obituaries, including the New York Times in the US, The Telegraph in the UK and El Pais in Spain.

As the first person to bring robots to the factory floor, Engelberger was truly a pioneer. All the tributes to his life recognize his great business achievements and the effect they have had on modern manufacturing. However, few of them mention the unique quality that enabled him to jump-start the robotics industry. As I've been resea

Joseph F. Engelberger, 90, a longtime resident of Newtown, known as the “Father of Robotics,” died peacefully at his home, December 1. He was born in Brooklyn, N.Y., July 26, 1925, and was the son of the late Joseph H. Engelberger and Irene Kolb.

“My big hope for robotics was to build one that would be personally useful,” Mr Engelberger told The Newtown Bee this past summer. “What would be interesting to me would be if you could hire a robot to live with an older person and be useful and be friendly. But I never got the funding to make that personal robot.”

Mr Engelberger was a graduate of Bassick High School in Bridgeport, Class of 1943, where he earned high academic honors. He was recruited to a post-Pearl Harbor Hawaii in World War II, serving in the US Navy from 1942 to 1946. He earned a bachelor’s degree in physics and a master’s degree in electrical engineering from Columbia University.

Early in his career, he served as chief engineer at Manning, Maxwell and Moore. He left MM&M to form his own company, Consolidated Controls Corporation.

In 1956, Mr Engelberger met inventor George Devol and the industrial robot’s first spark was ignited. Hearing about Devol’s recently patented Programmable Article Transfer, Mr Engelberger, inspired by author Isaac Asimov’s robot stories, immediately grasped the potential for factory floor automation. He launched the world’s first robotics company, Unimation. Its first industrial robot, called Unimate, was installed in a General Motors plant in 1961. Factories worldwide later developed the technology, transforming modern manufacturing processes.

Unimate even made an appearance on The Tonight Show with Johnny Carson, in 1966, famously sinking a golf putt, much to Mr Carson’s and the audience’s amazement. Since Unimate was introduced, approximately three million industrial robots have been installed in manufacturing facilities around the world. As founder and president, Mr Engelberger gr

1. Liauchonak I, Pankratieva E, Engelberg D. Diagnostic Value of Hysteroscopy in Abnormal Uterine Bleeding. Canadian Family Physician, submitted for publication.
2. Nand V, Almatt A, Li CK, Engelberg D. Comparing apples to apples: did this patient get worse with a mandibular advancement appliance? Journal of Dental Sleep Medicine 2015;2(4):187–188.
3. Engelberg D, McCutcheon A, Wiseman S. A case of ginseng-induced mania. J Clin Psychopharmacol. 2001 Oct;21(5):535-7.
4. Greenough G, McGeehin M, Bernard SM, Trtanj J, Riad J, Engelberg D. The potential impacts of climate variability and change on health impacts of extreme weather events in the United States. Environ Health Perspect. 2001 May;109 Suppl 2:191-8.
5. Patz JA, Engelberg D, Last J. The effects of changing weather on public health. Annu Rev Public Health. 2000;21:271-307.
6. Contributing Author. Potential Consequences of Climate Variability and Change for Human Health in the United States. National Assessment Synthesis Team, US Global Change Research Program. 2000. Available online at: http://www.usgcrp.gov/usgcrp/Library/nationalassessment/overviewhealth.htm
7. Engelberg D, Gallagher RP, Rivers JK. Follow-up and evaluation of skin cancer screening in British Columbia. J Am Acad Dermatol. 1999;41(1):37-42.

Ernst Engelberg (5 April 1909 – 18 December 2010) was a German university professor and Marxisthistorian.

He made a particularly noteworthy contribution with his two-volume biography of Otto von Bismarck which in the view of at least one commentator represented a paradigm shift for historiography in the German Democratic Republic.

Life

Provenance

Ernst Engelberg was born into a family with well documented democratic revolutionary credentials. His grandfather Julius Engelberg (1829-1902) had taken to calling himself "von Engelberg" and joined a citizens' militia in the aftermath of 1848. Ernst Engelberg's father, Wilhelm Engelberg [de] (1862-1947), was a publisher and a left-wing activist, who in 1898 had founded the local Social Democratic Party association in Haslach. The family was politically aware, and even as an old man Wilhelm Engelberg delighted to proclaim himself a "democrat of 1848" ("Ich bin 48er Demokrat").

Early years

Following a childhood that encouraged political questioning, and which was overshadowed by war, post war political turmoil, and the economic disaster of the 1920s inflation, Engelberg found himself propelled towards the Young Communists, which he joined in 1928, and the Communist Party which he joined following his 21st birthday, two years later. His university studies took him between 1927 and 1934 to the Universities of Freiburg (briefly), Munich and Berlin, where one of his tutors was Gustav Mayer. In addition to History, he studied Social Economics (Nationalökonomie), Philosophy and Jurisprudence. His doctoral dissertation was produced under the supervision of Hermann Oncken and, later, Fritz Hartung: it was concerned with Social Democracy in Germany and Chancellor Bismarck's social policy. By the time his dissertation was completed, however, in 1934, régime changehad