| Name |
Start Time |
Ending Time |
Year |
Region |
Overview |
| Feedback Control |
Antiquity |
|
|
Greece |
Ktesibios, Philon and Heron design feedback control systems for flood chambers. |
| Thermostat control |
17th century |
|
|
Europe |
Cornelis Drebbel develops an oven that is controlled by a thermostat. |
| Centrifugal Governor |
18th century |
|
|
England |
James Watt adopts a centrifugal governor used in windmills to control the speed of his steam engine. |
| Morse alphabet |
|
|
1838 |
USA |
Samuel Morse suggests an alphabet for telegraphic information transfer based on statistical properties of the signs to transmit. |
| Theory of feedback control systems |
|
|
1868 |
England |
James Clerk Maxwell writes the treatise "On Governors" developing an abstract and general theory of feedback control systems. |
| Macy Conferences |
1946 |
1953 |
|
USA |
Macy Conferences on Cybernetics form the basis of a science unifying disciplines like information theory, computer theory or control technology. |
| First working computers |
1930's |
1940's |
|
Great Britain, Germany, USA |
First computers are constructed after the unfinished antetype of Charles Babbage in England (analytical engine, 1830's) by Konrad Zuse in Germany (Z1, 1938), Alan Turing in England (The Bombe, 1939) and Howard Aiken and Grace Hopper (Harvard Mark I, 1944 |
| Information Theory |
|
|
1948 |
USA |
Claude Shannon (1916-2001) publishes his landmark "A Mathematical Theory of Communication" |
| Cybernetics |
|
|
1948 |
USA |
Norbert Wiener writes his book "Cybernetics or control and communication in the animal and the machine" thus giving direction to this emerging field. |
| Reafference Principle |
|
|
1950 |
Germany |
E. von Holst and H. Mittelstaedt for the first time express the reafference principle (principle of efference copy) [Reference: von Holst, E. and H. Mittelstaedt, Das Reafferenzprinzip. Naturwiss., 1950. 37: p. 464.] |