automatic

The word "automatic" connects one of the oldest dreams of human civilization — machines that operate by themselves — to the modern world of automation, self-driving cars, and artificial intelligence.‌​‌​‍​‍​‍​‌​‍​‌​‍​‍​‌​‍​‌​‍​‌​‍​‌​‍​‌​‍​‍​‍​‍​‌​‍​‌​‍​‌​‌​‍​‌​‍ It derives from Greek "αὐτόματος" (automatos, self-moving, acting of itself), from "αὐτός" (autós, self), and entered English in the 18th century via New Latin "automaticus."

The concept of self-moving devices is as old as Western literature itself. In Book XVIII of the Iliad (c. 8th century BCE), Homer describes the divine smith Hephaestus creating golden tripods on wheels that could roll themselves into the assembly of the gods and return on their own. Homer uses the word "automatos" to describe their motion. These Homeric automata represent one of humanity's earliest recorded fantasies of automation.

The English word "automaton" (plural "automata") entered the language in the 17th century, referring to self-operating mechanical devices. The clockwork automata of the 18th century — mechanical ducks that appeared to eat and digest, writing boys that dipped quill pens in ink, and chess-playing figures — fascinated European society. Jacques de Vaucanson's Digesting Duck (1739) and Wolfgang von Kempelen's chess-playing Turk (1770, later revealed as a hoax) were among the most famous.

The adjective "automatic" was formed from "automaton" around 1748 to describe anything that operates by itself. The word quickly expanded from mechanical devices to human actions performed without conscious thought. A doctor might describe certain reflexes as "automatic" — the body acting without the mind's deliberate direction. Psychology adopted the term for habitual behaviors performed without conscious awareness.

The 19th century saw "automatic" applied to an expanding range of technologies: automatic looms, automatic signaling systems, automatic telegraph repeaters. The "automatic" firearm — one that continues to fire as long as the trigger is held and ammunition is available — was developed in the 1880s. The Maxim gun (1884) was among the first truly automatic weapons.

The 20th century made "automatic" one of the most ubiquitous words in English. Automatic transmission in automobiles (developed in the 1930s-1940s) divided the driving world into "stick shift" and "automatic" camps. Automatic washing machines, automatic doors, automatic teller machines (ATMs), and automatic coffee makers became fixtures of modern life.

The Greek prefix "auto-" (self) generated a vast modern vocabulary. "Automobile" (self-moving vehicle), "autonomy" (self-law, self-governance), "autopilot" (self-piloting), "autograph" (self-writing, a signature), "autobiography" (self-life-writing), and "autocracy" (self-rule, rule by one person) all use this prefix. "Autism" (from "autismos," self-ism) was coined in 1911 by the Swiss psychiatrist Eugen Bleuler to describe extreme self-absorption.

The noun "automation" — the use of largely automatic equipment in manufacturing or other processes — was coined in 1948 by Delmar S. Harder, a Ford Motor Company executive. It rapidly became one of the defining concepts of the postwar industrial era, and remains central to 21st-century economic and social debates about the future of work.

The figurative sense of "automatic" — guaranteed, certain, requiring no effort — appeared in the 20th century. "An automatic raise," "an automatic qualification," or "an automatic response" all describe outcomes that follow without deliberation. This usage extends the mechanical metaphor: an automatic outcome is one that happens as reliably as a machine's operation.

From Homer's divine tripods to today's self-driving vehicles, the concept encoded in "automatic" — things that act by themselves — has been a persistent thread in human imagination and engineering. The word itself, assembled from Greek parts in the age of clockwork, now names a principle that governs an ever-expanding portion of modern life.