A true story of innovation that "reads like a movie" (Seth Godin),
centered on a scrappy team of engineers--far from the Silicon
Valley limelight--and their quest to revolutionize the traditional
trade of masonry by building a robot that can lay bricks. Humans
have landed men on the moon, programmed cars to drive themselves,
and put the knowledge of our entire civilization in your back
pocket. But no one--from MIT nerds to Army Corps engineers--has
ever built a robot that can lay bricks as well as a mason. Unlike
the controlled conditions of a factory line, where robots are now
ubiquitous, no two construction sites are alike, and a day's work
involves countless variables--bricks that range in size and
quality, temperamental mortar mixes, uneven terrain, fickle
weather, and moody foremen. Twenty-five years ago, on a challenging
construction job in Syracuse, architect Nate Podkaminer had a
vision of a future full of efficient, automated machines that freed
bricklayers from the repetitive, toilsome burden of lifting, in
bricks, the equivalent of a Ford truck every few days. Offhandedly,
he mentioned the idea to his daughter's boyfriend, and after some
inspired scheming, the architect and engineer--soon to be
in-laws--cofounded a humble start-up called Construction Robotics.
Working out of a small trailer, they recruited a boldly
unconventional team of engineers to build the Semi-Automated Mason:
SAM. In classic American tradition, a small, unlikely, and
eccentric family-run start-up sought to reimagine the behemoth $1
trillion construction industry--the second biggest industry in
America--in bootstrap fashion. In the tradition of Tracy Kidder's
The Soul of a New Machine, SAM unfolds as an engineering drama,
full of trials and setbacks, heated showdowns between meticulous
scientists and brash bricklayers (and their even more opinionated
union), and hard-earned milestone achievements. Jonathan Waldman,
acclaimed author of Rust, masterfully "reveals a world that
surrounds us but mostly eludes our notice" (The Boston Globe).
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