Minimum human intervention is required to control many large facilities such as this electrical generating station.

Cartoon from the 1936 Summer Olympics looks forward to the year 2000. Television technology lets spectators watch events at home while radio carries their promptings and applause to loudspeakers in the stadium. It appeared in the Olympia-Sonderheft of the Berliner Illustrierte Zeitung.

In the context of engineering, automation is when a device or a machine is changed in such a way that it can fulfill the task it was designed for without the need of human interaction. Very often, this means that the machine is fitted with an additional system which takes control of its functions. For example, a centrifugal governor controls a steam engine.