The Roots of Automation Before Mechatronics [Historical
Massimo Guarnieri · IEEE Industrial Electronics Magazine · 2010
The inventions of Kenotron (the thermionic valve diode, 1904) by John A. Fleming and Audion (the thermionic valve triode, 1906) by Lee De Forest started the revolution of electronics, that merged with mechanics, automation, and computer science around the mid-1950, generating present-day industrial robots and eventually mechatronics. A brief look at the history of automation before mechatronics came is given in this paper.