The machinery about which I am writing is found in the confectionery
industry, but it is also generally used throughout the food industry and
some other areas that produce items that need to be wrapped and packed
for distribution. It just happens that much of my working life was spent
in the confectionery industry. Similar machinery operates in the
pharmaceutical industry, is used for wrapping and handling books, for
wrapping blocks of fuel and for packing tea and other items. Some of the
robots described are used in the glass industry, loading drinking
glasses direct from hot moulding plants. They are used to load filled
bottles into cases in the drinks business or shampoo for chemical
manufacturers. Other industries, for example the textile industry, used
machinery designed for other purposes (such as weaving), before the
development of packaging machines, that worked on comparable principles.
Some of the mechanisms in all of this machinery possibly have their
ancestry in the great cathedral clock mechanisms from as early as the
fifteenth century. Just because this book is mainly illustrated by
reference to chocolate bars and sweets does not mean that that is the
only application, nor does it lessen the ingenuity applied in the
designs of these machines or their importance in the modem world.