Control in the technical societies: a brief history

By the time control engineering emerged as a coherent body of knowledge and practice (during and just after WW2) professional engineering societies had existed for many decades. Since control engineering is an interdisciplinary branch of the profession, new sections devoted to control were quickly established within the various existing technical societies. In addition, some new bodies devoted specifically or primarily to control were established. This article, a revised version of a paper presented at the IEEE 2009 Conference on the History of Technical Societies, describes how control engineering as a distinct branch of engineering became represented in technical societies in a number of countries

Control engineering and the professional societies

By the time control engineering emerged as a coherent body of knowledge and practice (during and just after WW2) professional engineering societies had existed for many decades. Since control engineering is an interdisciplinary branch of the profession, new sections devoted to control were quickly established within the various existing technical societies. In addition, some new bodies devoted specifically or primarily to control were established. This brief paper will present in outline the history of how control engineering as a distinct branch of engineering became represented in technical societies – or their equivalent – in the USA, UK, USSR, Germany and France

Control in the Cold War: the genesis and early years of the International Federation of Automatic Control

1956 was a turning point for the emerging discipline of automatic control. The approach known as classical control had emerged from WW2 as a result of collaboration between electronics, communications and mechanical engineers, predominantly in the USA and UK, but to a lesser extent in Germany. Developments in this area in the USSR were less significant, but an important novel approach to non-linear dynamics had been researched there in a control context since the 1930s. At least eight conferences were held in Europe in 1956, including an international one in Paris in June. In retrospect, however, the seminal event was the conference in Heidelberg in September organized jointly by the two German engineering societies VDE / VDI. This drew wide international participation, including delegates from Eastern Europe and Japan; but perhaps most importantly it marked the inception of IFAC, the International Federation of Automatic Control. Prompted by the growing internationalization of control engineering, and the Cold War climate of the mid 1950s, a number of delegates to the Heidelberg conference expressed interest in establishing a new, international, association. The driving force for this initiative came from G. Ruppel (Germany), R. Oldenburger (USA) and V. Broïda (France). A meeting of 25 interested participants was held and a resolution adopted to found “an international federation of automatic control [… with] the following objectives: 1. To facilitate the interchange of information in automatic control and to promote progress in this field. 2. To organize international congresses in this field.” A provisional committee was set up which met at the offices of the VDI/VDE specialist control group in Düsseldorf in April 1957, and IFAC came into being at a meeting in Paris in September that year. The first president was the American Harold Chestnut and the Vice-Presidents were the Russian A. M. Letov and the Frenchman V. Broïda. It was also agreed that Letov would be the second president and that the first IFAC Congress would be held in Moscow in 1960 – a remarkable international collaboration given the political climate of the time. IFAC’s constitution provided for one National Member Organization (NMO) per nation state. Countries such as the USA and the UK with more than one technical society with interests in the field established new overarching NMOs such as the American and UK Automatic Control Councils. The only sticking point was Germany, whose divided status made this politically impossible, and not until 1971 were both East and West Germany allowed to be represented by separate NMOs. German interests, however, were supported from start as a result of the establishment of the IFAC secretariat initially in Düsseldorf. The 1960 IFAC Moscow Congress was a huge affair, and an important event in the development of automatic control. A number of seminal papers in the new area of modern control were presented, perhaps the most famous being Kalman’s paper on his radical approach to linear filtering and prediction. It was also an opportunity for a meeting between East and West, even though Soviet suspicion limited informal contact between Russians and international delegates. This paper will examine the early development of IFAC and the contribution it made to international collaboration in the field of automatic control during the Cold War

Projects in History of Automatic Control

This report summarizes the projects in the course History of Control given in the spring of 1996. There was a standard project whose purpose was to give some perspective on the recent developments of the field through study of the contents of the major conferences in Automatic Control. Some students also suggested their own projects, development of an interactive representation of the history of control (The Control Tree) and reflection on the development of control through some awards. Then projects were performed in groups

The development of automatic control in France

This paper discusses the history and development of automatic control in France

A pilot program for selecting, editing, and disseminating engineering and scientific educational subject matter from NASA technical reports Quarterly report, 1 Mar. - 31 May 1969

Preparation, dissemination and evaluation of monograph

Jens Glad Balchen: A Norwegian Pioneer in Engineering Cybernetics

This paper tells the story of Jens Glad Balchen (1926-2009), a Norwegian research scientist and engineer who is widely regarded as the father of Engineering Cybernetics in Norway. In 1954, he founded what would later become the Department of Automatic Control at the Norwegian Institute of Technology in Trondheim. This name was changed to the Department of Engineering Cybernetics in 1972 to reflect the broader efforts being made, not only within the purely technical disciplines, but also within biology, oceanography and medicine. Balchen established an advanced research community in cybernetics in postwar Norway, whose applications span everything from the process industry and positioning of ships to control of fish and lobster farming. He was a chief among the tribe of Norwegian cybernetics engineers and made a strong impact on his colleagues worldwide. He planted the seeds of a whole generation of Norwegian industrial companies through his efforts of seeking applications for every scientific breakthrough. His strength and his wisdom in combination with his remarkable stubbornness gave extraordinary results