Research in the History of Control Systems

控制系统史研究

• 批准号: 9810212
• 负责人: David Mindell
• 金额: --
• 依托单位: Massachusetts Institute of Technology
• 依托单位国家: 美国
• 项目类别: Standard Grant
• 财政年份: 1998
• 资助国家: 美国
• 起止时间: 1998-09-15 至 2000-06-30
• 项目状态: 已结题
• 来源: https://www.nsf.gov/awardsearch/showAward?AWD_ID=9810212&HistoricalAwards=false
• 关键词: Research; History; Control; Systems

How did the field of control engineering--that branch of engineering devoted to the control of machinery, vehicles, systems, processes and even human machine operators--develop during the twentieth century in parallel with broader social anxieties about technology as an autonomous or `out-of-control` force? This study examines the idea and embodiment of control from 1916 through 1945, developing case studies of the Navy Bureau of Ordnance and its contractors who developed technologies of `fire control,` the Sperry Company and its concept of `feedback engineering,` Bell Laboratories' work on feedback amplifiers for long-distance information transmission, and work on analog computers and the `theory of servomechanisms` undertaken in the Electrical Engineering department of MIT. It goes on to examine how the National Defense Research Committee drew together these four lines of work during World War II. The project develops and extends the PI's dissertation work, taking advantage of two new sources of archival material, the Bureau of Ordnance records on fire control, for the years 1926-40, which have only now become available, and the recently-declassified records of NRDC Division 7 (which oversaw fire control). The final product of this research will be a book.

控制工程领域--致力于控制机械、车辆、系统、过程甚至人机操作员的工程学分支--是如何在20世纪与更广泛的社会焦虑同时发展起来的，这些社会焦虑认为技术是一种自主或失控的力量？这项研究考察了1916年至1945年期间控制的思想和体现，开发了海军兵器局及其承包商的案例研究，他们开发了“火控”技术，Sperry公司及其“反馈工程”概念，“贝尔实验室”对用于远程信息传输的反馈放大器的研究，以及麻省理工学院电气工程系从事的模拟计算机和‘伺服机构理论’的工作。它接着考察了国防研究委员会是如何在第二次世界大战期间将这四项工作结合在一起的。该项目开发和扩展了PI的论文工作，利用了两个新的档案材料来源--直到现在才能获得的1926-40年的军械管理局关于消防的记录，以及最近解密的NRDC第七师(负责监督消防)的记录。这项研究的最终成果将是一本书。