In the twenty-five years between 1930 and 1955 crucial changes in our
understanding of feedback control systems occurred. The history of these
developments is traced in this book.
Feedback control devices were used for general industrial control, in
process control, in aircraft and ships, in the telephone system and in
analogue computing systems. The significant developments that occurred
during the 1930s in several of these areas are analysed in detail.
During the Second World War the ideas and techniques that had been
developed in disparate areas were brought together to form what we now
know as the classical frequency response methods of analysis and design.
Work on methods for dealing with non-linear systems, sampled-data
systems and stochastic systems began. The immediate post-war years saw
the consolidation and dissemination of the classical methods and the
addition of the root locus method for analysis and design. The final
chapters cover the beginnings of so-called modern control with the
introduction of state-space methods of analysis and design.
As well as being of interest to engineers the book is also relevant to
historians concerned with social, economic and labour history.