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IEEE Control Systems Magazine BOOKSHELF analog computers to technological de- well as the polemics of the analog-ver- Interested in Reviewing? velopments in the mid-20th century is sus-digital debates of the 1950s and Readers interested in contribut- largely unknown to younger engineers. 1960s, debates and conflicting claims ing reviews to the Bookshelf depart- James Small’s The Analogue Alternative over speed, accuracy, and precision, ment should contact the associate is an extremely valuable contribution for example. As Small notes, the devel- editor for book reviews indicating to the history of computing—and the opment of analog computers was “a their areas of expertise: history of information engineering in process involving technical and eco- Prof. Chris C. Bissell general—and it should play a valuable nomic imperatives, military agencies, Department of Telematics part in bringing to the attention of a civilian and government bodies, com- The Open University wider readership what one historian of mercial companies, universities, pri- Milton Keynes technology has called “one of the great vate firms and research institutes.” He Great Britain MK7 6AA disappearing acts of the twentieth handles this complexity with a thor- [email protected] century.” ough understanding of the contingen- The author begins by reviewing ana- cies of technological change; the result log computing devices in the 19th and is a fascinating read of great interest to early 20th centuries, discussing early both practicing engineers and histor- ac network analyzers and the develop- ians of technology. The Analogue Alternative, by James ment of mechanical network analyzers If analog computing is an example of S. Small, Routledge, 2001, 322 pp., £70, in the United States and the United the sociopolitical context of technolog- ISBN 0-415-271193. Kingdom, in particular the pioneering ical change, then the history of cyber- From Newspeak to Cyberspeak. A prewar work of Vannevar Bush at MIT netics is even more so. Even in the History of Soviet Cybernetics,by and Douglas Hartree in Manchester, West, cybernetics has had a contested Slava Gerovitch, MIT Press, 2002, 369 UK. The heyday of the analog com- history, but when we turn to the former pp., $37.95, ISBN 0-262-07232-7, Re- puter, however, was in the postwar pe- Soviet Union we find a fascinating story viewed by Chris Bissell. riod, when analog and hybrid comput- of the interplay of technology, mathe- When I was a student in the 1960s, ers lay at the heart of military and civil matics, ideology, and politics. Slava any introduction to “computing” differ- research and development in aeronau- Gerovitch’s study of Soviet cybernet- entiated between analog and digital tics, process control, nuclear engineer- ics, From Newspeak to Cyberspeak, computers and explained the differ- ing, and elsewhere. A detailed discus- makes this story accessible for the first ence. These days, the contribution of sion of this makes up the bulk of this time to a wide readership. In the early valuable book. James Small makes a days of cybernetics, following on from convincing case that the analog elec- the pioneering work of Wiener and oth- tronic computer should not be seen as ers, the ideas were criticized in the So- a natural development of earlier me- viet Union, being labeled as a “pseudo- chanical devices; indeed, the postwar science” (a term that has a much stron- centers of excellence were quite differ- ger resonance in Russian, both politi- ent from those of the prewar machines. cally—being part of the vocabulary of Furthermore, he argues, there emerged the State—and linguistically, using the a distinct postwar analog computer in- native prefix meaning “lying” rather dustry and community of users, which than our Greek euphemism). Gerovitch grew steadily until the mid-1960s and has quite a lot to say about language, only later declined. which makes extremely interesting Those interested primarily in tech- reading, but the most valuable part of nical information will find a wealth of this book is the reporting of his thor- information on such classic machines ough research in the archives of the as Typhoon and the RAND analog com- former Soviet Union that have only puter, as well as later commercial ma- recently been available to scholars. chines from a wide range of companies During the Khruschev era, cybernet- in the United States and the United ics was more than reinstated. In the late Kingdom. But there is also a fascinating 1950s and early 1960s it became enor- sociotechnological discussion of the mously influential and all encompass- role of analog computers in engineer- ing. A proposal for a Soviet Institute of ing culture and engineering design, as Cybernetics included the subjects August 2003 IEEE Control Systems Magazine 91 logic, control, statistics, information In many devices the outer feedback theory, semiotics, machine translation, loops were closed by human opera- economics, game theory, biology, and tors. The illustrations are helpful, in- computer programming. By the follow- cluding photographs, signal flow dia- ing decade, however, cybernetics had grams, and line drawings. The latter in- become “a convenient tool of bureau- clude wonderful sketches by Sperry cracy.” Gerovitch tells an intriguing Gyroscope Company’s Alfred Crimi story: “It [Soviet cybernetics] was con- showing the relation of the gunner to tested, fought over, reshaped, and put the machines in an aircraft ball turret. into service by various groups with di- Sperry, a company that specialized in verse interests and political agendas.... control systems as discrete technol- The military and pacifists, technocrats ogy, is described in Chapter 3. and environmentalists, dissidents and The Bell Laboratories chapter in- Party bureaucrats alike spoke the lan- cludes a careful analysis of the contri- guage of cybernetics.” But Gerovitch’s butions of Harold Black, Harry Nyquist, story is not only an outstanding history and Hendrik Bode to the concepts of of Soviet cybernetics. Both his book negative feedback and stability. To and Small’s, on the history of analog Black, stability originally meant what computing, delve deeply into the com- we would now call insensitivity or ro- plex environment within which technol- bustness in the presence of a variable ogies are created, come to maturity, environment. Stability in the sense of and, in some cases, decline. They invite graphic Institute on the design and use Routh and Hurwitz was the concern of us to reflect on technology in our own of telerobotic vehicles for undersea ex- engine designers and mathematicians time. ploration and later studied the history such as Nicholas Minorsky, the progen- of technology at MIT. In this text he ex- itor of the three-term controller. At Bell amines the founding myths of control Labs its relation to Nyquist’s work was Between Human and Machine: Feed- engineering and sheds considerable understood. back, Control and Computing before light on its people, companies, and The MIT mechanical differential Cybernetics, by David A. Mindell, ideas. “The first half of the book.” analyzers, first used to implement ar- Johns Hopkins University Press, 2002, writes Mindell, “follows four techno- tillery firing tables, became differen- 256 pp., $46, ISBN 0-8018-6895-5. Re- logical traditions of control systems: tial equation solvers in the hands of viewed by David L. Elliott. the U.S. Navy Bureau of Ordnance and physicists and mathematicians. Today automatic control and com- its fire control contractors, the Sperry Their flow diagrams were inherited munication are intertwined, based on Gyroscope Company, the Bell Tele- by the electronic analog computers such mathematics as Norbert Wiener’s phone Laboratories, and Vannevar of the 1950s. Between Human and Ma- work on filtering and prediction. How- Bush’s laboratory at MIT… In each of chine has chapters on the wartime ever, their development and relation- these settings … engineers had differ- work at MIT of the Servo and Radia- ships between the world wars is far ing conceptions of what constituted a tion Labs, in conjunction with Navy richer than such hindsight suggests. In system, the role of the human opera- bureaus. The problem was to direct Between Human and Machine, David tors, and how machines represented large gun turrets with small electric Mindell explores the period from 1916 the world.” The second half covers the signals, and as a consequence an MIT to 1948, raising many questions and convergence of those four technologi- graduate, Edward Poitras, designed providing interesting answers. Why cal traditions and their transformation the system of motors, selsyns, feed- was Wiener asked to look at the prob- during World War II. back loops, and manual controls for lem of tracking aircraft? Why do the Here are Hannibal Ford, Elmer the Palomar telescope. controls of the 200-in telescope on Sperry, Vannevar Bush, and the elec- Chapter 7 is also concerned with the Mount Palomar look like a gun direc- tromechanical navigation and gun di- fire control research sponsored by the tor? What did “stability” mean to Har- rection computers built for navigators, National Defense Research Committee old Black? Who first conceived of the pilots, and artillerymen. The compo- on the antiaircraft problem. The PID controller? Why did early nents included gyrocompasses, syn- antiaircraft guns of the Allies in World antiaircraft gun controls work at all? chros, differential gears, ball-and-disc War II were successful for three rea- David A. Mindell worked as a con- integrators, and all the cranks and di- sons: bombers, setting their trol engineer at Woods Hole Oceano- als that are seen now only in cartoons. bombsights, had to fly straight; radar 92 IEEE Control Systems Magazine August 2003.
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