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History of Control Systems

Automatic control systems have existed for over 2000 years, with the first known feedback control device being a water clock in ancient Egypt around 300 BC. Milestones in the development of closed-loop automatic control include a temperature regulator from 1620 and James Watt's centrifugal flyball governor for steam engines in 1788. In 1868, Maxwell was able to use differential equations to explain instabilities in the flyball governor, demonstrating the importance of mathematical modeling and signaling the beginning of modern control theory. Over the next 100 years, new mathematical techniques enabled control of more complex systems and developments in optimal, stochastic, robust and adaptive control methods expanded applications of control methodology across areas like space travel, manufacturing, and more efficient engines and processes.

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Nicca Politado
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168 views

History of Control Systems

Automatic control systems have existed for over 2000 years, with the first known feedback control device being a water clock in ancient Egypt around 300 BC. Milestones in the development of closed-loop automatic control include a temperature regulator from 1620 and James Watt's centrifugal flyball governor for steam engines in 1788. In 1868, Maxwell was able to use differential equations to explain instabilities in the flyball governor, demonstrating the importance of mathematical modeling and signaling the beginning of modern control theory. Over the next 100 years, new mathematical techniques enabled control of more complex systems and developments in optimal, stochastic, robust and adaptive control methods expanded applications of control methodology across areas like space travel, manufacturing, and more efficient engines and processes.

Uploaded by

Nicca Politado
Copyright
© © All Rights Reserved
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Download as DOCX, PDF, TXT or read online on Scribd
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Aydalla, Tommy Jr. T.

BG6DA

HISTORY OF CONTROL SYSTEMS

Automatic control Systems were first developed over two thousand years ago. The first feedback control device on record is
thought to be the ancient water clock of Ktesibios in Alexandria Egypt around the third century B.C. It kept time by regulating
the water level in a vessel and, therefore, the water flow from that vessel. This certainly was a successful device as water clocks
of similar design were still being made in ~Baghdad when the Mongols captured the city in 1258 A.D. A variety of automatic
devices have been used over the centuries to accomplish useful tasks or simply to just entertain. The latter includes the
automata, popular in Europe in the 17th and 18th centuries, featuring dancing figures that would repeat the same task over and
over again; these automata are examples of open-loop control. Milestones among feedback, or "closed-loop" automatic control
devices, include the temperature regulator of a furnace attributed to Drebbel, circa 1620, and the centrifugal flyball governor
used for regulating the speed of steam engines by James Watt in 1788.

In his 1868 paper "On Governors", J. C. Maxwell (who discovered the Maxwell electromagnetic field equations) was able to
explain instabilities exhibited by the flyball governor using differential equations to describe the control system. This
demonstrated the importance and usefulness of mathematical models and methods in understanding complex phenomena, and
signaled the beginning of mathematical control and systems theory. Elements of control theory had appeared earlier but not as
dramatically and convincingly as in Maxwell's analysis.

Control theory made significant strides in the next 100 years. New mathematical techniques made it possible to control, more
accurately, significantly more complex dynamical systems than the original flyball governor. These techniques include
developments in optimal control in the 1950's and 1960's, followed by progress in stochastic, robust, adaptive and optimal
control methods in the 1970's and 1980's. Applications of control methodology have helped make possible space travel and
communication satellites, safer and more efficient aircraft, cleaner auto engines, cleaner and more efficient chemical processes,
to mention but a few.

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