21 Facts About Joseph Engelberger

Joseph Frederick Engelberger was an American physicist, engineer and entrepreneur.

Licensing the original patent awarded to inventor George Devol, Engelberger developed the first industrial robot in the United States, the Unimate, in the 1950s.

Joseph Frederick Engelberger was born on July 26,1925, in Brooklyn, New York.

Joseph Engelberger grew up in Connecticut during the Great Depression, but later returned to New York City for his college education.

Joseph Engelberger worked as an engineer with Manning, Maxwell and Moore, where he met inventor George Devol at a Westport cocktail party in 1956, two years after Devol had designed and patented a rudimentary industrial robotic arm.

However, Manning, Maxwell and Moore was sold and Joseph Engelberger's division was closed that year.

In Japan, Joseph Engelberger was widely hailed as a key player in the postwar ascendancy of Japanese manufacturing quality and efficiency.

An early proponent of increased investment in robotic systems, Joseph Engelberger published articles and gave congressional testimony on the value of using automation in space long before the successes of NASA's Mars landers, Galileo, and other unmanned space science missions.

Joseph Engelberger consulted for NASA on the use of robotics in space exploration.

Joseph Engelberger, who had served as Unimation's chief executive since its inception, left the company not long thereafter.

In 1963 Joseph Engelberger filed with the US Patent Office his Application Ser.

Joseph Engelberger introduced the HelpMate, a mobile robot hospital courier, as the flagship product of his new company.

Joseph Engelberger hoped to kick-start a new industry for in-home robots, but he started in 1988 by selling his first HelpMate to Danbury Hospital, located in the same Connecticut city where his company was based.

HelpMate was acquired by Cardinal Health in the late 1990s, a move Joseph Engelberger came to regret, complaining that the new owners moved away from his preferred model of renting out robots toward selling off used, depreciated models.

The 2000 World Automation Congress was dedicated to Joseph Engelberger, who delivered the keynote address.

Joseph Engelberger notably discouraged the notion of legged robots, arguing that robots should use wheels for locomotion, although he supported the use of robotic arms to allow the machines to interact with their surroundings.

Joseph Engelberger worked on developing a two-armed robot to act as a "servant-companion" to seniors with limited mobility.

Joseph Engelberger died on December 1,2015, in Newtown, Connecticut, a little more than four months after celebrating his 90th birthday.

Joseph Engelberger received US Patent No 3,504,868 in 1970 that gave the priority in the technology of the space magnetic propulsion to the United States of America.

Joseph Engelberger was elected to the National Academy of Engineering in 1984.

Joseph Engelberger was honored among "The 1000 makers of the 20st Century" by The Sunday Times in 1992.