in November 1942, less than eight months after the facility had started being converted to military purposes. A total of 7,800 Avengers were constructed at the plant in Ewing, including the plane George H. W. Bush was flying on September 2, 1944, when he was shot down over the Pacific Ocean by Japanese anti-aircraft fire. In September 1945, the Navy turned almost all of the plants it had acquired during the war over to the Surplus Property Administration; portions of the Ewing plant were one of the limited number of exceptions. After the war ended, the plant was converted to return to production of auto components. First robot In 1961, the facility became the first commercial user in the United States to use a programmable industrial robot to replace human workers, installing the Unimate automated hydraulic arm developed by George Devol and Joseph Engelberger. It carried units of aluminum door handles and other automotive components weighing as much as into cooling pools; such units had just been die cast from molten metal, and the use of robots eliminated the risks to employees of handling extremely hot metal pieces. A task previously performed by three shifts of employees was converted to be done by the robot. The first production Unimate was donated to the Smithsonian Institution in 1971 after being used for 100,000 hours during its 10 years of continuous operation at the Ewing plant. Closure In December 1992, General Motors announced that what was then known as the Delphi Interior & Lighting Systems plant would be closed in 1993, which would mean that the 2,200 people working there would be out of work. In September 1993, William D. Hurley of Independent Component Systems announced that a deal had been reached to acquire the plant from General Motors, as part of an agreement that had been reached with the assistance of the State of New Jersey, though the transaction never was completed. After reaching concessions with Local 731 of the United Auto Workers, General Motors announced in May 1994 that the plant would be kept open as the result of an agreement with the UAW under which the plant's workforce would be reduced by 25% as an effort to reduce costs. In 1998, as the plant was no longer economically competitive with other manufacturing facilities, it was permanently closed, resulting in the loss of jobs for the 900 people who had