May 1990: Engineering By Design, of San Jose CA, develops a robotic positioning system that uses two air cylinders to move a rotary head into the three positions necessary to transfer hard discs between wet storage cassettes and a surfacing spindle. With two discs held in the rotary head grippers it was possible to remove one surfaced disc from the spindle and replace it with a new disc in a few seconds. The finished disc could then be transferred back to the wet cassette and another disc picked up while the surfacing spindle does its work.