Indramat means excellent drive and control technologies, right? However, it also means “Gesellschaft zur INDustrialisierung-RAtionalisierung und AutoMATisierung” or, in English, “Association for Industrialization, Rationalization, and Automation.”
Indramat was born in 1958, when nobody had a computer at home, going to space was the biggest technology goal, and robots were found in science fiction, not in your broom closet.
Industrialization, especially in Indramat’s native Germany, meant greater prosperity and greater freedom. Rationalization was a lofty goal, one that made people think of clean, streamlined workplaces without outdated shibboleths (we’re pretty sure they were all thinking about shibboleths). Automation was going to put us all in flying cars in no time, and provide us with three day work weeks and lots of free time for all that space tourism people were planning.
Indramat is now called the Electric Drives and Controls Technology Group of Bosch Rexroth; Rexroth was an equally excellent hydraulics company.
Some things have changed. Some things, including the quality of Indramat products, have not.