TIL the first commercial CNC machine from 1952 cost over $1 million in today's money

I was watching some random history of tech video on YouTube last night and they dropped that number. I mean, I knew old machines were expensive, but that's just insane. It was a Cincinnati Milacron Hydrotel, basically a giant 3-axis mill run by punched tape. Makes me appreciate the little Haas in my shop a whole lot more, even when it's acting up. Has anyone else come across a fact about the trade's history that just blew your mind?

4 comments

4 Comments

abby_martinez25d ago

Remember finding an old issue of American Machinist from the 1940s at a garage sale. Had an article about a new cutting fluid that was supposed to be this miracle stuff. Turns out it was basically just kerosene with a little sulfur mixed in. It's funny how we think of all this stuff as some ancient lost art when half the time they were just making it up as they went along, same as we do now.

brian_taylor152mo ago

That Cincinnati Hydrotel was actually from 1955, not 1952. The 1952 machine was a different one, a Kearney and Trecker Milwaukee-Matic. It's a common mix-up. Both were crazy expensive for the time, but it shows how fast that tech was moving back then. You go from a one-off prototype to a few different companies making them in just a couple years.

phoenix_singh252mo ago

My buddy found an original paper blueprint for a steam hammer from the 1880s in his grandpa's attic. The thing needed a team of guys just to run the boiler before you could even strike a piece of metal. Really puts how far we've come into perspective, all from a dusty roll of paper.

the_viola2mo ago

That point about the steam hammer blueprint is wild. I read that some early machine shops had more people running the plant's steam engine than actually making parts. It makes our modern power bills seem like a small trade off.