The application of Automatic control system is believed to be in use even from the ancient civilizations. Several types of water clocks were designed and implemented to measure the time accurately from the third century BC, by Greeks and Arabs. But the first automatic system is considered as the Watts Fly ball Governor in 1788, which started the industrial revolution. The mathematical modeling of Governor is analyzed by Maxwell in 1868. In the 19th century, Leonhard Euler, Pierre Simon Laplace, and Joseph Fourier developed different methods for mathematical modeling. The second system is considered as Al Butz’s Damper Flapper – a thermostat in 1885. He started the company now named as Honeywell.
The beginning of the 20th century is known as the golden age of control engineering. During this time classical control methods were developed at the Bell Laboratory by Hendrik Wade Bode and Harry Nyquist. Automatic controllers for steering ships were developed by Minorsky, Russian American Mathematician. He also introduced the concept of Integral and Derivative Control in the 1920s. Meanwhile, the concept of stability was put forward by Nyquist and followed by Evans. The transforms were applied in control systems by Oliver Heaviside. Modern Control Methods were developed after the 1950s by Rudolf Kalman, to overcome the limitation of classical Methods. PLC’s were introduced in 1975.
