In light of this startling evidence, is the machine tied fly a myth?

The Daily Flypaper blog posted a fascinating video of the 1.3 million dollar fly tying system from Intuitive Surgical…

… which is a bit misleading, it’s actually an Intuitive Surgical robot showing off what it can do. ISRG has been the darling of Wall Street for a number of years, considered best of breed for computer controlled robotic surgery.

via The Daily Flypaper Blog

While the possibilities are endless, I wouldn’t expect the cost of routine surgeries to suddenly become cheap, perhaps scheduling them may involve menus and a drive thru, but operating amphitheaters remain in short supply. Us humans have shown remarkable resistance to technology especially if it’s holding a sharp knife – akin to the revulsion we felt in handing over our credit card information in the early days of the Internet.

1.3 million is about the same as pre- and post-Med tuition, excluding cadavers and books.

Naturally, watching the video had me wondering – as the work is intricate to be sure, but we’ve always insisted those bubble-packed flies from Japan were machine made, and if machinery intricate enough to create them is of recent invention – what made all those flies during the 50’s and 60’s?

Fly tying machine, circa 1943

Therein lies the mystery as I can find nothing other than a patent application for 1943. History buffs will recognize that it couldn’t have been used by the Japanese until 1946, but may have played an important role in reconstructing Japanese industry.

Is it possible we’ve been misled all these years?

All those big ring-eyed hooks, buttonhole twist cotton thread and a Scarlet Ibis gleaming at us from the capable hands of a human? Makes you wonder what he thought our fish were thinking.

Anyone know what these rumored machines looked like or have an account of automated post war fly machinery?

Tags: Intuitive Surgical, ISRG, fly tying machine, machine tied fly, myth, patent application, Royal Coachman, Wall Street darling, youtube

5 thoughts on “In light of this startling evidence, is the machine tied fly a myth?

  1. Erik Helm

    Amazing. All that wonderful advance in technology, and it still sucks. Man the human being is amazing. Perhaps we humans should spend less time developing robots that are at best, poor approximations of single human tasks, and spend our time on collectively developing the human state and mind.

  2. Don Nelson

    Erik –

    If your contention is that, overall, man is superior to a machine – you’re right. However, in specific surgeries it is proven that man and machine are far superior to man alone. Period. Not only has it been established but, proven over and over and over.

  3. Jim Ferguson

    It may be somewhat misleading to call this machine-tied. As Don implies, the ISRG robots are assistive devices, not independent robots. A human is behind the controls, viewing through a vision magnification system. See the description here: http://tinyurl.com/2mhxoh

    The tip-off for me was the way it repositioned the materials to get a good wrap, and then when it picked up two stray fibers from the tail to clip them off. The complexity of software that could provide that level of sophistication would be extreme and require huge amounts of computing horsepower, if it is possible at all.

    While this system may enhance precision for surgery or other critical tasks, a production fly tyer would seem to be far more efficient than this system for a task like fly tying that requires a different kind of precision.

  4. Yomama

    It is a little difficult to make a time/motion/cost analysis from this video, but does this mean that the price of my favorite Japanese bubble pak is now going to go through the roof ?

  5. John Peipon

    Why do I think that this is the fly tying equivalent to the “Alien Autopsy” film? But wait, there’s more…

Comments are closed.