Numbers Take Control: NC machines

摘要

It's not exactly clear which numerically controlled machine tool entered the market first. Many companies claim to be among the first, but most records were destroyed or lost due to subsequent company closings and ac questions, and many of the people in volved at the dawn of the NC age have left the industry. In the final analysis though, when NC appeared it alterec forever the way machine tools operate Sources agree that in 1949, the U.S Air Force commissioned the Massachusetts Institute of Technology Ser Mechanism Laboratory to begin research on NC machine tools. Such machines would enable the Air Force to more effectively produce complex spares and other parts for military aircraft on a repeatable basis. MIT began its research in 1950.