Word: topps
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Dates: during 1950-1959
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Because of the expense, the biggest benefits of automation have largely been restricted to rich companies-until now. Last week California's Topp Industries announced a breakthrough in automation that will bring savings in cost and increased efficiency to small plants. Name of the new device: the Micro-Path Control System...
...system is the invention of Bill and Ruth Marantette, a young engineering, couple from Columbia Falls (pop. 1,232), Mont. They started work three years ago in a garage workshop with $2,500 in savings, an $1,800 loan, plus further cash put up by Topp when it bought the invention. The major objective of the Marantettes was to eliminate the complex, expensive computers used in previous control systems. Such computers cost $60,000 and up, need trained engineers to program and manage their operations; every instruction in a process must be turned into a mathematical equation, which...
...work for Cummins-Chicago Corp., makers of bank business machines, which needed a 600% increase in a certain manufacturing process; it got a 1,200% increase. The company also hoped to save $500 a week; it now saves about $1,000 a week on the process. Now Topp's Micro-Path division, headed by Thomas F. Johns, is out showing the machine to U.S. industry. North American Aviation wants four of the machines; Hughes Aircraft is interested in using the machine on a 20-ft. lathe to drill and rout its Falcon missile. There may be other uses beyond...
...Micro-Path System promises to be the hottest product marketed by Topp's two founders. President Bernard F. Gira and Executive Vice President Herbert J. Peterson. After working as purchasing agents in the aircraft industry, the two joined forces in 1955 to make electronic instruments for the missile age. They turn out instruments that tell an aircraft's angle of attack, compute its Mach number electronically, time and program the firing of its rocket armament; there is even an instrument to measure the structural-material erosion of missiles at hypersonic speeds. With a second division making radios...
...Topp's President Gira thinks his sales may double or triple with the new control system. All told, says Gira, there are 1,500,000 machine tools already in place in U.S. machine shops that could and should be fitted with automated controls...