IEE Control & Automation Division: Chairman´s address. Control´s limitations

The history of the development of control theory, as distinct from a historical catalogue of the inventions of control devices, is given, showing the high level of sophistication attained, even before the Second World War. The 1939-45 war saw the application of the theories take shape in manners which were certainly not envisaged by the theories. Since 1945, tremendous attention has been paid to furthering control theory by mathematicians and engineers, but the address emphasises the great impact which control concepts have made on other sciences. Examples are described in many fields. The attempts to describe sociological phenomena are shown in some recent work on colour segregation in the USA. This is followed by a discussion on propaganda and advertising and a parallel is drawn with the spread of disease in epidemics. In the economics field, a trivial example of inflation is modified to take account of capital investment. It is shown how a hierarchial social structure has an effect on salary distributions with particular reference to engineers. After dealing with several examples taken from the medical field, the paper concludes with the dangers of using mathematical models and the use of abstract theory without experiment in each field of application.