TIL The first recorded human death by robot was in 1979 when 25-year-old Ford Motor assembly line worker Robert William was struck by an arm of a malfunctioning one-ton robot

Williams was one of three operators of the parts retrieval system, a five-story robot built by the Unit Handling Systems division of Litton Industries. The robot was designed to retrieve castings from high density storage shelves at the Flat Rock plant. Part of the machine included one-ton transfer vehicles, which were carts on...