Hats off to a great tinkerer; George C. Devol

I devote a lot of space on this blog to the sailors who love to tinker with their boats. Small potatoes in the great scheme of things, especially when you read the obituary in the Washington Post today of George C. Devol, the tinkerer who invented the robotic arm. From the Post;

George C. Devol, 99, a self-taught tinkerer whose invention of the robotic arm revolutionized factories around the world, died...... Aug 11 at his home in Wilton, Conn.

Mr. Devol said that his limited formal education never held him back. "I always went into areas of industry where nobody else knew anything either.....There was nowhere to go to get information, so I generated it"

"How can we afford to let a country as big as this go down the drain in manufacturing capability?" he said in a 1984 interview with the Miami Herald.

The full story in the Washington Post can be viewed online at Washingtonpost.com