Not just Norbert

Abstract

Purpose

Although Norbert Wiener is justifiably granted the epithet “father of cybernetics”, a number of other engineers from a control or telecommunications background also turned to areas that can broadly be categorised as cybernetic during and immediately after WW2. The purpose of this paper is to give an overview of some of these lesser‐known technologist contributors to the emerging ideas of cybernetics.

Design/methodology/approach

The paper is based on primary and secondary literature, as well as two interviews from the early 1990s.

Findings

In Germany, Hermann Schmidt, Chair of the Verein Deutscher Ingenieure (Society of German Engineers) committee on control engineering (established in 1939) gave a talk on control engineering and its relationship with economics, social sciences and cultural aspects as early as October 1940. Winfried Oppelt, another member of the committee, also researched non‐technological applications of control ideas in his subsequent career (economics, biology), as did the communications engineer Karl Küpfmüller (pharmacokinetics, models of the human nervous system). In the UK, Arnold Tustin developed a mathematical model of a human gun operator during the war, and then applied control ideas to economic systems from the mid‐1940s.

Originality/value

The material presented here is not well‐known even within the control and communications engineering sectors, and is largely absent from histories of cybernetics – at least those in the English language.

Citation

Bissell, C. (2010), "Not just Norbert", Kybernetes, Vol. 39 No. 4, pp. 496-509. https://doi.org/10.1108/03684921011036754