Before workflow automation had a name

We like to believe workflow automation is a 21st-century thing.

APIs, AI models, cloud orchestration, hyperautomation, fancy dashboards—things of that sort.

But the truth is that humans have been obsessed with workflow automation for centuries. We just called it something else.

Anytime we faced a process that was tedious, error-prone, or just plain boring, we found ways to systematize it. Sometimes that system was mechanical. Sometimes it was digital. And sometimes, it was so seamless, it became invisible.

Let’s take a little detour through history and meet the unexpected ancestors of your modern automation platform.

When stairs became optional

The elevator may not feel like an automation system today, but in its time, it absolutely was. Long before workflow engines ran approvals and escalations, Elisha Otis figured out how to automate something people desperately wanted to avoid: climbing stairs. But elevators weren’t just about moving up and down. They were one of the first systems to introduce fail-safes—Otis’s safety brake made sure the whole thing didn’t come crashing down if the cable failed. Input goes in (the floor button), the system processes the request (moves you up or down), and it handles exceptions (brake kicks in if anything goes wrong). Today’s workflow engines aren’t much different. We just swapped physical movement for data movement and cables for APIs.

Colored lights running the show

Traffic lights tell a similar story. On the surface, they’re just colored bulbs. But they manage one of the most complex, real-time workflows humans deal with every day: traffic. Multiple independent agents—drivers, pedestrians, cyclists—all trying to move through shared intersections with conflicting goals. The traffic light receives inputs (cars approaching), applies logic (who gets to go next), enforces conditions (right of way, emergency overrides), and outputs action (red, yellow, green). It’s essentially queue management with built-in exception handling. Strip away the asphalt, and you’ve got the same orchestration your operations team wishes their approval workflows could run on.

When boxes became tellers

Then came the ATM. Back when banking meant waiting in long lines for basic tasks, someone realized many of those transactions followed simple, rule-based processes. Enter: self-service banking. The ATM quietly automated the most repetitive human workflows—authenticate the customer, check balances, process transactions, update ledgers, print receipts. The logic was basic, but the philosophy behind it was anything but. Self-service wasn’t just a feature. It was early proof that automation works best when users can interact directly with processes designed to minimize human bottlenecks. Which, funnily enough, is still what most companies are trying to build inside their modern SaaS stacks.

Cars built like clockwork

Assembly lines deserve a mention too. Henry Ford’s great contribution wasn’t just affordable cars—it was sequencing. Instead of one worker doing every step, tasks were broken into stages, assigned to different people at the right time, and pushed along a linear flow. Dependencies, task timing, and resource allocation—the core ingredients of any well-built workflow engine. Ford automated the physical side. Today’s workflow platforms apply that same thinking to information, approvals, compliance checks, and handoffs across departments.

The all knowing librarians

Even libraries got into the act long before anyone invented search engines. Librarians assigned metadata—titles, authors, subjects, Dewey Decimal codes—so information could be retrieved without manually searching every book. That’s document management in its earliest form: categorization, indexing, retrieval, version control. If you’ve ever tried to fix a broken enterprise document system, you know good metadata design is still one of the most underrated parts of workflow automation.

Instructions punched into paper

And of course, we can’t leave out punch cards. Long before user interfaces existed, people wrote their logic into physical cards—one hole per instruction. Stack enough cards together, and you had a full-blown program: conditional logic, sequential steps, repeatable processing. If that sounds familiar, it should. Punch cards were simply primitive API calls printed on cardboard. They also taught us one painful truth that still haunts automation projects today: garbage in, garbage out.

Still the same instinct

The point is, none of this is new. We’ve been automating for centuries. The tools have changed. The instinct hasn't. Every time we tried to remove manual work, reduce errors, or create consistency, we were building some form of automation.

Today, a company like ours doesn't exist because automation was invented last year. It exists because humans have always looked for ways to simplify complexity. We just happen to be applying that same instinct inside your digital workflows.