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At their giant Hamtramck assembly plant in Detroit, employees of General Motors give the robots they work alongside typical American names like Joe or Bob. But the robots carry more formal titles painted on their sides, like ABB or Kawasaki. These are anything but American. Despite once dominating the industry - and even controlling the basic patents that forced foreign competitors to license their technology - American robot makers are a vanishing breed. They may soon be extinct. 5 There were once more than 60 American makers of robots, but only few remain. In September 1990 the last top American producer of large robots fell into foreign hands when Cincinnati Milacron, a machine-tool company, sold its industrial-robot division to ABB, a Swedish-Swiss engineering giant. Yet apart from strong foreign competition, the dwindling number of American robot producers is also partly the result of over-ambitious expectations and bad planning. 10 Westinghouse's flirtation with robotics is typical. In 1983 it bought Unimation, a company credited with inventing the industrial robot. Unimation's hydraulic robots could once be found in most American car plants. But Unimation stuck with complicated and leak-prone hydraulic technology, whereas foreign rivals switched to simpler and more reliable robots driven by electric motors. In 1988 what remained of Unimation was sold to Staubli, a Swiss company, which also makes the Puma range of robots. 15 Because domestic firms backed the wrong technology, American customers bought imported robots rather than home-made ones. Another problem was that they bought too few, regardless of their origin. "American companies have not been good at putting robots to work", says a specialist on robots. The figures seem to suggest otherwise: robot orders by American firms reached a record $514 million in 1989 and - despite a softening American economy - they were at roughly the same level in 1990. That is still a 20 lot less than the $2 billion of robot sales once forecasted for 1990.

Questions

1. American robot makers -

(1) use foreign names for their products (2) are dominating the robot industry (3) are gradually diminishing (4) license technology from foreign competitors

2. What is the purpose of the second paragraph? (1) To contradict the first paragraph (2) To give reasons for the fall of American robot makers (3) To summarize the passage (4) To analyze the main reason why American robot makers have failed

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