Morley receives CSIA Lifetime Achievement Award

Apr. 22, 2016 – Last night, Rick Caldwell, founder and president of SCADAware, presented the first Control Systems Integrator Association (CSIA) Lifetime Achievement Award for Contributions to the Automation Industry to Dick Morley at the CSIA Executive Conference 2016 Awards Reception and Dinner, following CSIA CEO Jose M. Rivera’s announcement of the newly created award.

Famously dubbed the father of the programmable logic controller (PLC), it is Morley who, in 1968, led the team to develop what is considered one of the most important inventions in manufacturing. Along with the PLC, Morley’s patents include the anti-lock braking system (ABS brakes), the computer floppy disk, the parallel inference machine, the handheld terminal, personal rapid transit, and magnetic thin film, among many others.

(Want to learn more about this brilliant mind? CLICK HERE to read our March/April 2016 profile on Dick Morley.)

The Lifetime Achievement Award was created to allow the CSIA to recognize individuals outside its membership for contributions to the automation and control system integration industry.

“Every so often, a person comes along who changes the way we live our daily lives and things are never the same again. They represent a paradigm shift: they cause a permanent change in our idea of what is possible,” said Caldwell during his presentation. “For our industry, that person is Dick Morley, the father of the PLC. In fact, as control system integrators, our business may not exist as we know it today if it had not been for Morley. So it is truly fitting that he is the first recipient of this lifetime achievement award.”

Morley has more than twenty U.S. and foreign patents, and has been recognized with many awards, such as the Franklin Institute’s Howard N. Potts Award and the Society of Manufacturing Engineers’ Albert M. Sargent Progress Award. He was also inducted into the Automation Hall of Fame.

The association said Morley could not attend the awards banquet due to health concerns. Caldwell, Rivera and a small group of other CSIA members presented Morley with the award on March 11 at his residence in Milford, N.H.

Morley has mentored many engineers through the years. “Some of us have the good fortune to know Dick personally. I myself am one of those lucky individuals,” said Caldwell. “Through the years, Dick has intrigued, inspired and mentored me. I am proud to have had the opportunity to share a little about the pioneer responsible for driving innovation in our business.”
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