The Shape of Things to Come (1950)

From the May 1950 issue of the Socialist Standard

An American invention, “Maddida,” the mechanical foreman, may open the way to robot factories, producing goods without human help, according to its inventor.

Maddida—its name is short for “magnetic drum digital differential analyses”—is a computing device which can take information from other machines, interpret it, and run the machines, says Reuter from New Brunswick.

Mr. Heyd Steele, 31-year-old physicist, who showed the machine at Rutgers University, said Maddida could do the work of a full aircraft crew, and handle 4,500 additions to eight-place decimals per second, working to an accuracy of one part in a million.

Maddida is the size of a pin-table. If the foreman should go wrong, a robot “doctor,” also shown at Rutgers, can diagnose the trouble. The above was a news item in South Wales Evening Post (29.3.50).

This news should be most encouraging for the unemployed, for would-be foremen, and other aspirants for promotion.

However, under a condition of Socialism such inventions will be welcomed.

Then each labour-saving device will mean more leisure for the community, and not, as now, longer dole queues, or other pleasantries of Capitalism.

P. J. Mellor.