Anti-aircraft fire control and the development of integrated systems at Sperry, 1925-40

The dawn of the electrical age brought new types of control systems. Able to transmit data between distributed components and effect action at a distance, these systems employed feedback devices as well as human beings to close control loops at every level. By the time theories of feedback and stability began to become practical for engineers in the 1930s, a tradition of remote and automatic control engineering had developed that built distributed control systems with centralized information processors. These two strands of technology, control theory and control systems, came together to produce the large-scale integrated systems typical of World War II and after.<
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