Prelude to Eight Essays on Control Science in the XX-th Century
Automatic control systems have been operating in many machines and devices at different periods of the human civilization. The control of windmills using centrifugal governors, dating back to the 17th century, is an early example. However, the rise and development of Control Science as an independent discipline has taken place in the 20th century only. After some initial decades of specific developments spurred by industrial needs and military requirements, the field has witnessed a paradigm shift about 50 years ago, under the impact of remarkable scientific discoveries. This paradigm shift gave rise to a new and awesome field, rich with theoretical challenges and multidisciplinary applications. At about the same time, an actual ''control community'' developed its own identity by setting the foundations for international societies like the International Federation of Automatic Control (IFAC), the Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers (IEEE), and others, and creating its own scientific journals. Normally, technical contributions on the frontiers of research are published in the European Journal of Control. However, considering the fading of time, we thought that this Journal would render a great service to our community by recording the views and memories of a number of senior and authoritative scientists of our field about the dawn of systems and control some 50 years ago, and the way our field has developed into a mature discipline. Our aim was neither to describe the complete picture, nor to write the ''official'' story of the dawn of control and its evolution. We have instead addressed a selected group of distinguished scientists who have been very active contributors to the field of Control Science through most of these 50 years, and we have asked them to share with our readers their views, their experiences, and their memories. These scientists have been selected based on the role they played in our scientific community, more than on the country where they have worked even if, by a ''historical'' point of view, these individuals were living and working in particular places and institutions of the world, and they are therefore excellent witnesses of the way the ideas of the time were being received in their local communities. We have voluntarily refrained from giving the authors of this special issue precise guidelines, leaving them very free to report on their personal experience and their personal views, if they wished to do so. Our hope was that by putting together their …