From Book News, Inc.
Examining the work of several laboratories, including the U.S. Navy, Sperry Gyroscope and Bell Telephone, Mindell shows how the foundations for control engineering and computing were laid well before Norbert Wiener formalized the field of cybernetics in 1948. By way of his analysis, Mindell (history of engineering and manufacturing, MIT) offers a new way to conceptualize the history of computing and explores the ongoing relationship between humans and machines. Written for a technically savvy audience, this book may be of interest to historians of science, technology, and culture, as well as to computer scientists and theorists.Copyright © 2004 Book News, Inc., Portland, OR

FROM THE PUBLISHER

Today, we associate the relationship between feedback, control, and computing with Norbert Wiener's 1948 formulation of cybernetics. But the theoretical and practical foundations for cybernetics, control engineering, and digital computing were laid earlier, between the two world wars. David A. Mindell shows how the modern sciences of systems emerged from disparate engineering cultures and their convergence during World War II. Mindell examines four different arenas of control systems research: naval fire control, the Sperry Gyroscope Company, the Bell Telephone Laboratories, and Vannevar Bush's laboratory at MIT. Each of these institutional sites had unique technical problems, organizational imperatives, and working environments, and each fostered a distinct engineering culture. Each also developed technologies to represent the world in a machine. At the beginning of World War II, President Roosevelt established the National Defense Research Committee, one division of which was devoted to control systems. Mindell shows how the NDRC brought together representatives from the four pre-war engineering cultures, and how its projects synthesized conceptions of control, communications, and computing. By the time Wiener articulated his vision, these ideas were already suffusing through engineering. They would profoundly influence the digital world.

SYNOPSIS

Examining the work of several laboratories, including the U.S. Navy, Sperry Gyroscope and Bell Telephone, Mindell shows how the foundations for control engineering and computing were laid well before Norbert Wiener formalized the field of cybernetics in 1948. By way of his analysis, Mindell (history of engineering and manufacturing, MIT) offers a new way to conceptualize the history of computing and explores the ongoing relationship between humans and machines. Written for a technically savvy audience, this book may be of interest to historians of science, technology, and culture, as well as to computer scientists and theorists. Annotation c. Book News, Inc., Portland, OR

FROM THE CRITICS

Alex Roland

Mindell's authoritative mastery of the disparate technologies he traces will secure this book an influential place in the historiography of science and technology in World War II.

Thomas P. Hughes

A rare historian who insightfully understands both the creators of technology and the technology they create, David Mindell engagingly tells a story of technological change in an organizational context. In Between Human and Machine, he provides a revealing account of a search for controls in a 20th century world of complex systems.

Michael S. Mahoney