History of Manufacturing Industrial Factory Automation Systems

This is not an official, historical, researched study or anything, just what our feeble old minds can remember.

One of the oldest computers I used was a (I think) NCR computer that had a huge keyboard with 80 columns of numbered keys. I can't remember how many rows of keys -- there must have been 8 or 12 rows of keys. You went down each column and selected the digits. Entering the data, by pressing keys, was like punching punch cards except you had the keyboard and bypassed the paper card. I was using this computer about 1977 but the computer was out of service then. Probably manufactured in 1950s or early 1960s.

Punched cards were stiff paper cards where in each column you selected a digit from 0 to 9. You had a keyboard that allowed you to punch the number for each column. The main reason everyone hated punched cards was that it took a long time to enter data. A simple program that added a couple of numbers could take 25 punched cards (times 80 columns). If you messed up on a card, you had to throw away the card and start over. Small programs could be hundreds of punched cards. If you got any cards out of sequence -- the program would not run. If you ever dropped the stack of cards it would take a long time to get them back in the correct sequence.

An early computer I used required you to manually punch out the holes of the card using a stylus. This was a small, new computer that I was using about 1974.

There was something magical about 80 columns since punch cards also used 80 columns. Maybe because most displays at the time (typewriters and teletypes) could only print 80 columns? A lot of early CRTs were also 80 columns of characters. Even today you can find message displays (operator interfaces) in 20 and 40 column lengths (multiples of 80).

Some of the earliest operator interfaces were teletypes. These were connected to computers and other equipment using current loop. Teletypes were very slow (1200 baud max?) but with the current loop you could communicate over very long distances. A teletype was basically a turbocharged typewriter. If your teletype could read and write punch tape you were considered "cool".

I remember core memory -- a bunch of doughnuts arranged in a matrix of wires. A single bit of memory back then was the size of about 128 megabytes (about a billion bits) today.

One big advance was the CRT. The CRT display and keyboard replaced the typewriters, teletypes and punch cards. These typically had 80 columns by 25 rows. Someone (IBM?) extended the ASCII character set to include graphical characters. You were cool if you could draw a rectangular box on the screen and put some text inside the box.

The Basic programming language was adapted to further increase what you could do with the CRT. Mostly changing colors of each character square (there were 80 columns by 25 rows or 2000 character squares). I remember an old Honeywell PLC and operator interface that was built like this.

Next was IBM's personal computer and DOS. I use to write a lot of Basic, Assembly Language, and C programs that ran under DOS. I remember the first time we got a 10 MB hard drive. We thought we would never fill up that 10 MB hard drive. Before hard drives, programs ran off of floppy disks or cassette tape drives. Typically the operating system was on one floppy disk and your programs were on other floppy disks. You were constantly pulling a floppy disk out, putting another in, taking it out, ... People that had two floppy disk drives were considered cool.

There was the VAX craze of the 1980s. You were not cool unless you had a VAX so everyone paid a fortune to own a VAX. I also got to play with many of the DEC PDP computers.

I played with Apple computers, Radio Shack TRS-80s, and Commodore computers in the 1970s and 1980s. The TRS-80 had a real-time operating system called OS9 that I later used on VME machines in the late 1980s. OS9 was a good OS.

The reason we discuss all of this is because if you wanted to do factory automation back in the 1970's and early 1980's -- this is what you used -- a general purpose computer. In the 1970's I worked for a company called Systems Engineering Laboratories (SEL) that built real-time minicomputers. I worked in the "Custom Engineering" group that built a lot of the real-world interfaces. This is where I learned about grounding, analog signals, digital signals, interfacing different devices, serial signals, clocking, etc.

One of the first robot and vision systems I used in the early 1980s were from General Electric.

SCADA Packages

One of the first SCADA packages I remember using was about 1987 called Genesis by Iconics. What a fantastic improvement over BASIC's 80 by 25 ASCII character based graphics. Genesis and Iconics are still around today although much improved. They were also one of the first software providers to start using the hardware keys that go on the parallel port.

A big problem with the personal computer was that they did not work with more than 640 KB of memory. Around 1990 a company called Phar Lap came up with ways to get around the "640 KB memory barrier". A company called US Data had a product called Factory Link that broke the 640K barrier and that propelled them past Genesis in sales and popularity.

The next big advancement in personal computers was the acceptance of Windows 3.11 (I think this was around 1993?). Windows had been around for years but nobody used it, except for a small company named Intouch that sold a product called Wonderware. Wonderware had been using windows for some time and had a windows product already developed, tested, and debugged. Very quickly, it seemed like almost overnight, everyone switched to Windows 3.11. Wonderware was in the right place at the right time because SCADA users suddenly changed to Windows and Wonderware. Wonderware is also well remembered for their incredible parties at the ISA shows. Actually, remembered for the start of the incredible Wonderware parties (nobody can remember the end of one).

US Data bet on IBM's new operating system OS/2 and rewrote Factory Link to run on OS/2. In hindsight, nobody wanted OS/2, they wanted Windows, so Factory Link lost a lot of market share and Wonderware gained it.

Creating windows and graphical elements in Windows 3.11 with C was very difficult. You had to make lots of operating system calls and get them all in the correct order or everything would crash. There were a lot of good third party routines you could buy that allowed you to write some slick operator interfaces. You had to manage all of the windows messages in your code.

Another big change that Windows brought was that you use to write to the hardware directly. Now everything goes through device drivers. I remember writing device drivers back in the early 1990s and what a mess they were.

Windows and DDE simplified a lot of software. Back in the 1980s everyone had their own proprietary software. Nothing talked to each other. Once Windows became popular everyone developed Windows drivers so that Windows was now the standard for tying everything together. Instead of having thousands of software driver interfaces for every platform, everybody started to standardize on Windows and DDE.

This change is similar to the current change facing large scale software systems developers today. In the late 1990s a lot of companies made lots of $ writing "middle ware" software that allowed one software package to talk another. Now with web services, this whole "middle ware" industry will shrink substantially. Note the similarities to what Windows and DDE did a decade earlier.

Then in about 1995 along came a new version of Visual Basic (version 3?) that allowed one to create a form in one click and with a second click drop a button on the form. Today it is hard to believe what a revolutionary concept this was back then. Before Visual Basic you would spend as much time programming the operator interface as you would programming the stuff that was displayed on the operator interface. Now you spend no time getting the operator interface to work.

Today everybody tries to sell their own version of a SCADA package. Most packages are a recreation of Visual Basic. This is why you now see Visual Basic and SQL Server replacing the proprietary software systems of yesterday.

The next revolutionary event will be Microsoft's .NET. With .NET only one thing is certain. The automation supplier market share will again be turned over. Our bet is on those companies that supply "controls" or "add-ins" for .NET programming languages.

Another SCADA History Lesson submitted by Jim Ruf

Windows has been around since the mid 1980’s. The earliest versions of windows have the copyright date of 1985 on them. The two main players in HMI software were east coast companies, Cimplicity and Intellution.

The Cimplicity of the 1980’s that evolved into the current GE product was originally developed for the government. It was a DOS based system that was very laborious to use. It took over 20 minutes to update anything because the programmer had to run three separate compilers to complete a change or update. (This was part of the original government spec.)

Intellution was a DOS based system with Dr. Halo graphics. Intellution had fast and easy editing which was its main selling point.

Both had their markets and were doing well. Wonderware was a small upstart California company that was trying hard to find a place in the marketplace. Wonderware was Windows based and everyone assumed Windows was just a fad at the time and DOS would be around for ever. The east coast experts were not giving Wonderware very good odds on survival.

In the late 1980’s a tragic accident happened that presented an opportunity for Wonderware and the company never looked back. A company in southern California that made cheese had some bad product go to market that resulted in the deaths of some consumers. The company workers had been running the ingredients through the manufacturing process too quickly resulting in a deadly product. Wonderware got involved and proved to the government regulatory agency’s, that processes monitored and recorded with Wonderware were accurate and correct. Many hard tests were conducted using Wonderware. Since it was Windows based it could easily document the process with documents and spread sheets instead of DOS on line print statements. Wonderware went from obscurity to best on the market in a very short time. Wonderware was the first to get regulatory agency’s approvals. And to this day that is why some company’s and insurance company’s strongly suggest or require Wonderware on certain types of facilities. It took Intellution and others several years to catch up with a Windows package and compete.

Wonderware and Intellution have always been competitors and have never been a part of the same company. Both company’s make excellent product and have similar approvals and certifications. Allen-Bradley has licensed both Wonderware and Intellution products before they developed their own HMI software package. Other company’s have also licensed and private labeled Wonderware and Intellution. When you count all the HMI’s made by both company’s the installed base is huge. Both company’s have been sold in the last few years so users are waiting to see if the product, support and pricing changes?

Thanks Jim! I was not aware of where Cimplicity came from before GE Fanuc, although I was well aware of it's early (not current) reputation as being difficult to use. And Dr. Halo brings back some good and bad memories. Modicon licensed FactoryLink I believe -- but I can not remember what Modicon called it?

We try to offer a fair and balanced opinion on every page of our website. We are not history experts and we would appreciate more information from other users to express their opinions which we will then incorporate. If you have questions or comments please post them on our message board (see button in left hand column) so that others can read and benefit.

History of Manufacturing, Industrial, Factory Automation Systems

as we can remember it

SCADA Packages

Another SCADA History Lesson submitted by Jim Ruf

Links