The Greeks had a word for things that move by themselves, and Ford named a department after it.
The Greek word automatos meant "acting of itself," combining auto (self) with a root related to thinking or willing.1 Homer used it in the Iliad to describe the gates of Olympus opening on their own and the self-moving tripods crafted by Hephaestus.2 The word carried a sense of wonder, describing things that acted without visible human effort.
The modern term "automation" entered industrial vocabulary in 1946, when Ford Motor Company created its Automation Department under Delmar S. Harder, a manufacturing executive tasked with mechanizing transfer operations between production stages.3
Harder reportedly coined the term to describe the automatic handling of parts between successive operations on the assembly line.4 Within a decade, the word had spread from Ford's factory floor to boardrooms, labor negotiations, and congressional hearings. A 1955 joint congressional subcommittee held hearings titled "Automation and Technological Change."5
The speed of adoption was remarkable. The word did not exist in common use before 1946. By 1960, it appeared in dictionaries as a standard English term.
Labor unions responded to automation with alarm. Walter Reuther, president of the United Auto Workers, warned in the 1950s that machines replacing workers would require new social arrangements to distribute the gains of productivity.6 The debate recurred with each wave of technological change, from mainframe computers in the 1960s to industrial robots in the 1980s to artificial intelligence in the 2020s.
The Greek root survives in "automaton," "automobile," and "autonomy," each combining self-action with a different sphere. An automaton acts by itself mechanically. An automobile moves by itself. Autonomy governs by itself.7