Not just Norbert
Purpose - Although Norbert Wiener is justifiably granted the epithet "father of cybernetics", a number of other engineers from a control or telecommunications background also turned to areas that can broadly be categorised as cybernetic during and immediately after WW2. The purpose of this...
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Published in | Kybernetes Vol. 39; no. 4; pp. 496 - 509 |
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Main Author | |
Format | Journal Article |
Language | English |
Published |
London
Emerald Group Publishing Limited
04.05.2010
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Subjects | |
Online Access | Get full text |
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Summary: | Purpose - Although Norbert Wiener is justifiably granted the epithet "father of cybernetics", a number of other engineers from a control or telecommunications background also turned to areas that can broadly be categorised as cybernetic during and immediately after WW2. The purpose of this paper is to give an overview of some of these lesser-known technologist contributors to the emerging ideas of cybernetics.Design methodology approach - The paper is based on primary and secondary literature, as well as two interviews from the early 1990s.Findings - In Germany, Hermann Schmidt, Chair of the Verein Deutscher Ingenieure (Society of German Engineers) committee on control engineering (established in 1939) gave a talk on control engineering and its relationship with economics, social sciences and cultural aspects as early as October 1940. Winfried Oppelt, another member of the committee, also researched non-technological applications of control ideas in his subsequent career (economics, biology), as did the communications engineer Karl Küpfmüller (pharmacokinetics, models of the human nervous system). In the UK, Arnold Tustin developed a mathematical model of a human gun operator during the war, and then applied control ideas to economic systems from the mid-1940s.Originality value - The material presented here is not well-known even within the control and communications engineering sectors, and is largely absent from histories of cybernetics - at least those in the English language. |
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Bibliography: | filenameID:0670390403 original-pdf:0670390403.pdf href:03684921011036754.pdf istex:695F5CE1CA464800C2B0871E12D9A8D394B7E4B2 ark:/67375/4W2-BTJWHMXM-V ObjectType-Article-2 SourceType-Scholarly Journals-1 ObjectType-Feature-1 content type line 23 |
ISSN: | 0368-492X 1758-7883 |
DOI: | 10.1108/03684921011036754 |