We discuss the application of computer-based automation to astronomy, specifically to observing, and discuss reasons for extending it to spectroscopy. Over the past twenty years there has been a revolution in manufacturing brought on by application of computers to planning and controlling complex operations. This change has been accompanied by a bewildering number of acronyms as well as unjustified hyperbole, but the fact remains that computers have made manufacturers a lot more efficient as well as nimbler, with marked effects on employment. Alarmist stories in our newspapers over the past decade seem to bear out this predicted trend. One advantage of computers in making things is the way they can control actual machines very precisely, so much so that manus no longer has an advantage.
Machines do their jobs uniformly so that a constant level of quality can be maintained.
Computers are rather single-minded, ready to send the right commands to a machine to do just what a design engineer had in mind, or at least what he told the computer to do. The greater influence of automation has been on the design engineer's own job, however. Computers are now being used to design and test products electronically. Data are transferred from department to department much faster, eliminating delay, duplication, and the inevitable associated errors. Designs may now be tested in computers and parts that would interfere modified, thus eliminating full stages of costly mock-ups.