Between Human and Machine: Feedback, Control, and Computing Before CyberneticsToday, we associate the relationship between feedback, control, and computing with Norbert Wiener's 1948 formulation of cybernetics. But the theoretical and practical foundations for cybernetics, control engineering, and digital computing were laid earlier, between the two world wars. In Between Human and Machine: Feedback, Control, and Computing before Cybernetics, David A. Mindell shows how the modern sciences of systems emerged from disparate engineering cultures and their convergence during World War II. Mindell examines four different arenas of control systems research in the United States between the world wars: naval fire control, the Sperry Gyroscope Company, the Bell Telephone Laboratories, and Vannevar Bush's laboratory at MIT. Each of these institutional sites had unique technical problems, organizational imperatives, and working environments, and each fostered a distinct engineering culture. Each also developed technologies to represent the world in a machine. At the beginning of World War II, President Roosevelt established the National Defense Research Committee, one division of which was devoted to control systems. Mindell shows how the NDRC brought together representatives from the four pre-war engineering cultures, and how its projects synthesized conceptions of control, communications, and computing. By the time Wiener articulated his vision, these ideas were already suffusing through engineering. They would profoundly influence the digital world. As a new way to conceptualize the history of computing, this book will be of great interest to historians of science, technology, and culture, as well as computer scientists and theorists. Between Human and Machine: Feedback, Control, and Computing before Cybernetics |
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I've read a great deal about people who have used the fire control systems during the second world war, and how amazingly accurate these systems were. But i could never find much on how the systems worked and where they came from. David's book fills in the gaps and documents this key contribution to history. This is a must-read for those who are interested in the technology behind Naval warfare or who are interested in how the anti-aircraft automatic fire control worked that shot down the German buzz bombs over the UK.
Contents
| 1 | |
| 19 | |
| 69 | |
Opening Blacks Box Bell Labs and the Transmission of Signals | 105 |
Artificial Representation of Power Systems Analog Computing at MIT | 138 |
Dress Rehearsal for War The Four Horsemen and Palomar | 175 |
Organizing for War The Fire Control Divisions of the NDRC | 185 |
The Servomechanisms Laboratory and Fire Control for the Masses | 207 |
Analogs Finest Hour | 231 |
Radar and System Integration at the Radiation Laboratory | 260 |
Cybernetics and Ideas of the Digital | 276 |
Conclusion Feedback and Information in 1945 | 307 |
Notes | 339 |
Bibliography | 393 |
Index | 417 |
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| Title | Between Human and Machine: Feedback, Control, and Computing Before Cybernetics Johns Hopkins Studies in the History of Technology, ISSN 2470-2773 |
| Author | David A. Mindell |
| Edition | illustrated |
| Publisher | JHU Press, 2002 |
| ISBN | 0801868955, 9780801868955 |
| Length | 439 pages |
| Subjects | › Computers / History Science / History Technology & Engineering / Automation Technology & Engineering / Engineering (General) Technology & Engineering / History |
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