One manufacturer has marketed "the first sewing machine with an electronic brain." Instead of the seamstress having to make many tricky adjustments by hand, with this machine all she has to do is press the appropriate buttons for it to produce many complicated stitches. The skilled job of making a buttonhole, for example, becomes easy: just place a button in the machine's holder, and it does the rest itself!

In the past few years, shops have undergone notable changes. You may have noticed that modern cash registers are quite complex devices. If you see a display similar to that of an electronic calculator, then a microprocessor is in use. As well as totalling your bill, it can note the type of product you buy so that automatically a list is being built up of items the store needs to restock. And if you use a credit card to pay, it can be automatically checked with your bank.

In offices, "desk-sized computers will become nearly as common as typewriters," predicts Scientific American. They will store details of information needed for each person's job and will be far easier to handle than bulky files, ledgers and reference books.

"Word-processors" are an application of Microchip Technology to typewriting. They take over a number of the repetitious aspects of typing. Many businesses send letters to their clients, and these letters often consist of standard paragraphs. A word-processor stores such basic paragraphs and types them automatically. It can also regulate line lengths, layout and even correct simple spelling errors. If the text has to be rearranged, the word-processor will do this and allow for other alterations. Two or three such devices can do the work of many more typists.

Factories have already become quite automated. In the past, the problem was to know how to teach a machine the complicated movements that come easily to a human worker. Microprocessors have largely overcome this problem and are being used to control robot arms.

Similar principles are being applied to farm work so that, for instance, ploughing can be performed by a driverless tractor, working continuously day and night.

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