Chris Bissell

A History of Automatic Control

Automatic control , particularly the application of feedback, has been fundamental to the development of automation. Its origins lie in the level control, water clocks, and pneumatics/hydraulics of the ancient world. From the 17th century onwards, systems were designed for temperature control, the mechanical control of mills, and the regulation of steam engines. During the 19th century it became increasingly clear that feedback systems were prone to instability. A stability criterion was derived independently towards the end of the century by Routh in England and Hurwitz in Switzerland. The 19th century, too, saw the development of servomechanisms, first for ship steering and later for stabilization and autopilots. The invention of aircraft added (literally) a new dimension to the problem. Minorskyʼs theoretical analysis of ship control in the 1920s clarified the nature of three-term control, also being used for process applications by the 1930s. Based on servo and communications engineering developments of the 1930s, and driven by the need for high-performance gun control systems, the coherent body of theory known as classical control emerged during and just after WWII in the US, UK and elsewhere, as did cybernetics ideas. Meanwhile, an alternative approach to dynamic modeling had been developed in the USSR based on the approaches of Poincare and Lyapunov. Information was gradually disseminated, and state-space or modern control techniques, fuelled by Cold War demands for missile control systems, rapidly developed in both East and West. The immediate post-war period was marked by great claims for automation, but also great fears, while the digital computer opened new possibilities for automatic control.

A.A. Andronov and the development of Soviet control engineering

Control engineering saw rapid development in many countries in the period immediately following World War II. Engineers and scientists concerned with control problems formed new professional groupings; university courses in the subject began to be offered; and research groups were set up in industrial, academic, and government laboratories. Hitherto secret wartime work was widely disseminated, and new military, industrial, and other applications of the emerging discipline were identified. Aleksandr Aleksandrovich Andronov (1901-1952) was a key figure in the development of control engineering in the former Soviet Union during this period, yet his name and his contributions to control theory and nonlinear dynamics are much less well known in the West than they deserve. The aim of this article is to give a brief introduction to Andronovs work, concentrating on his background in nonlinear dynamics, and his subsequent role in stimulating Soviet research into control engineering-most significantly in the wake of the founding of his Moscow seminar on the topic in 1944.

An overview of ICT-based assessment for engineering education

A well-designed assessment strategy can motivate students, and help teachers and institutions to support deep learning. In contrast, inappropriate forms of assessment may promote surface learning, and will therefore fail to support the true goals of education. Recent theories of learning stress the value of dialogue, negotiation and feedback. Learning is seen to take place within communities of practice, where members collaborate to construct an understanding of their field of study. Assessment within such communities can help provide the feedback and shared meanings essential to membership. Information and communication technologies (ICTs) can facilitate the best aspects of assessment. Possibilities range from simple web-based tests for practice and self-assessment, through facilitation and assessment of group work, to recent developments in semantic analysis for automatic marking. Drawing on the lessons of learning theories, this paper explores how ICTs can support best practice in assessment for engineering education.

Historical perspectives - The Moniac A Hydromechanical Analog Computer of the 1950s

The Moniac, or Phillips machine as it is more commonly known is unusual, perhaps unique, in the world of analog computers and simulators in employing hydraulic components to simulate dynamic systems, rather than electrical or mechanical devices. While the machine may seem quaint to us now, it is difficult to imagine that any other contemporary simulator would have been quite so successful in directly demonstrating the dynamic behavior of an economic system both to students and professional economists. This article aims to bring wider attention to the machine while emphasizing the relationship between Phillips work and control engineering

Control Education: An Iconoclast's View

Abstract The paper aims to identify, and review critically, some of the hidden assumptions in the conventional control engineering curriculum. Topics addressed include: the role of mathematics; the philosophy of engineering; the use of computer-based tools; and the aspirations and requirements of students and employers.

Vladimir Aleksandrovich Kotelnikov: pioneer of the sampling theorem, cryptography, optimal detection, planetary mapping... [History of Communications]

In 1933 the young Russian communications engineer Vladimir Aleksandrovich Kotelnikov published a paper in which he formulated, for the first time in an engineering context, the sampling theorem for lowpass and bandpass signals. He also considered the bandwidth requirements of discrete signal transmission for telegraphy and images. Kotelnikov subsequently worked on scrambling, cryptography, optimal detection, and planetary radar (including the radar-assisted cartography of Venus). He was awarded numerous Soviet and international prizes, and played a major role in Soviet academic and professional life in the field of radio engineering. Yet his achievements are still comparatively little known outside Russia.

Supporting Student Projects at a Distance through ICT: The UK Open University Approach

In recent years the British Open University has been providing increasing ICT support to distance learners carrying out projects within the Faculty of Technology and elsewhere in the University. This paper reports three generic support tools: (1) a CD-ROM providing general guidance on planning, carrying out and writing up a final-year undergraduate technology project; (2) the electronic Information Search Guide , designed as a user-friendly front end to a variety of web sites, bibliographic databases, electronic journals and other information sources; and (3) ROUTES (Resources for Open University Teachers and Students), a library service providing access to selected, quality-assessed, Internet resources for Open University courses, searchable by course or keyword. By means of such tools, distance learners can enjoy resources for project work similar (or, in some aspects, even superior) to those of their face-to-face counterparts, including online access to the full text of many journals. This paper reports the current state of (1) and (3), and work in progress on (2). The CD-ROM was designed initially for the comparatively small numbers of students (up to 100 per year) carrying out a final-year, 600-h undergraduate project. It is now offered to many other students taking projects, and is also being developed - as is the Information Search Guide - in support of a new, 300-h project course planned to attract over 1000 students per year. ROUTES currently provides course-specific World Wide Web links for over 100 courses throughout the University, and is expanding rapidly.

The Role of the History of Technology in the Engineering Curriculum

SUMMARY In contrast to mathematics and science, where the history of the disciplines has long found a place in university curricula, the history of technology does not feature in many European engineering degrees. This paper will consider the pedagogical potential of the history of technology, with reference to four historical case studies. It is argued that the inclusion of such elements in engineering programmes can (a) give conventional students a vital broader perspective on their subjects and (b) improve the attractiveness of technology to those who would not normally consider it as an object of study.

Colloquium: Digital Technologies--Help or Hindrance for the Humanities?.

This article offers reflections arising from a recent colloquium at the Open University on the implications of the development of digital humanities for research in arts disciplines, and also for their interactions with computing and technology. Particular issues explored include the ways in which the digital turn in humanities research is also a spatial/visual one; the tension between analysis based on the extensive ‘hard’ data generated by digital methodologies and the more subtle evaluations of traditional humanities research; the advantages and disadvantages of online resources that distance the researcher from the actual archive, book, artefact or archaeological site under investigation; and the unrealized potential for applying to the humanities software tools designed for science and technology. Constructive responses to such challenges and opportunities require the full rigour of the critical thinking that is the essence of arts and humanities research.This article offers reflections arising from a recent colloquium at the Open University on the implications of the development of digital humanities for research in arts disciplines, and also for their interactions with computing and technology. Particular issues explored include the ways in which the digital turn in humanities research is also a spatial/visual one; the tension between analysis based on the extensive ‘hard’ data generated by digital methodologies and the more subtle evaluations of traditional humanities research; the advantages and disadvantages of online resources that distance the researcher from the actual archive, book, artefact or archaeological site under investigation; and the unrealized potential for applying to the humanities software tools designed for science and technology. Constructive responses to such challenges and opportunities require the full rigour of the critical thinking that is the essence of arts and humanities research.

Metatools for Information Engineering Design

An examination of the professional practice of engineers in many disciplines reveals a history of engineers developing highly sophisticated tools to eliminate the need to ‘do mathematics’ in the conventional sense. This chapter will build upon the previous one by Dillon to consider further aspects of the history of a number of what I shall call mathematical ‘meta-tools’ in the fields of electronics, telecommunications and control engineering. In common with Dillon I argue that, for most engineers, ‘doing mathematics’ has become something categorically different from the mathematics of physical scientists or mathematicians. The chapter concentrates on the origins and changing fortunes of a number of classic information engineering meta-tools that appeared in the period just before or after the Second World War: Bode plots (late 1930s); the Smith chart (1939); the Nichols chart (1947); phasor, spectral and signal constellation models (throughout the period); and the root-locus technique (1948). The 1950s and 1960s saw an increasing mathematicisation of engineering education, linked to the rise of the notion of ‘engineering science’ that was driven to a large extent by the legacy of WW2 research and development and the post-war funding environment in the USA and elsewhere. Such changes, and the arrival of digital computers, meant that the utility of the earlier diagrammatic tools was often played down or questioned. In recent years, however, such tools have been incorporated into powerful engineering software, where their function now is not to avoid computation, but to mediate between the user and the machine carrying out the computation.