Material currently is written for all three Parts over Periods 1-4. For Period 5 the material is mostly assembled. The Preface is enclosed here, the details in Parts 2 and 3 are available on request.
Part 1. Preface
Harold Chestnut, Rufus Oldenburger and their associates sensed this to be the right environment to establish worldwide scientific communication and interaction through a robust and lasting international engineering-scientific professional organization. Through marvelous skill, tact and diplomacy they were able to achieve this through the funding of IFAC (International Federation of Automatic Control) reaching across the Iron Curtain at the height of the cold war. IFAC became robust and durable through its organization as an effective (neither too tight nor too loose) federation of many nations each represented by their National Member Organizations (NMO). By an equally admirable act of diplomacy the founders were able to bring together the largest national engineering societies (IEEE, ASME, AICHE, AIAA, ISA, SIAM and others) which were most active in control to form AACC (American Automatic Control Council) as the National Member Organization for the USA. There was no cold war between these societies but of course there was a natural defensiveness about protecting their territories. The choice of a two sided role for AACC as
1.1
The history of cooperation between AACC and IFAC
The history of IFAC including its triennial congresses is not
an objective of this writing which is dealing with the history
of cooperation of AACC with IFAC. Because of the well thought
out structure and organization this was quite smooth and mostly
routine. Two events should be mentioned here and will be
elaborated later on in Chapter 2.1.
1.1.1 IFAC is sustained by membership dues paid by individual
NMO's of the various nations like AACC for the US
Because of the
very wide spread of the size and economic strength of the member
nations the rates paid were subdivided into 4 levels (Table
1.2.1). Naturally the rates originally were set in US dollars,
the traditional international currency. However, when the
devaluation of the dollar started in the seventies, this created
an unpredictably variable change in the IFAC budget. Hence,
IFAC decided to list its dues in Swiss Franks. AACC agreed
somewhat reluctantly thus assuming responsibility for these
variable monetary changes. This required adjustments of AACC
Sponsoring Society dues to IFAC since that time.
1.1.2 Originally the papers on the program of the triennial
IFAC Congresses were selected in two stages:
1.) The Technical Committees of the various National Mother
Organizations, which had a structure identical to the Technical
committees of IFAC itself, solicited contributed papers and
selected worthy ones to be proposed to the technical committees
of each particular IFAC Congress.
2.) The latter then used its discretion to select the ones for the program. This was somewhat cumbersome and also somewhat duplicative since the program committee was already composed of the representatives of the various NMO's. So in 19___ the process was simplified to contributed papers being directly submitted to the Program Committee of the specific IFAC Congress which handles the complete review and selection process. The NMO's continued their vigorous activities in initiating and/or steering the various IFAC Symposia which are basically technical symposia created by local initiative in various countries and receiving a public blessing from IFAC by bestowing the name IFAC Symposium. Part 4 contains a list of such symposia.
1.2 The history of cooperation between AACC Member Societies
Stability, viability and vigor in AACC was preserved over these
36 years but the internal dynamics of the interactive
association of powerful independent societies inherently
resulted in some swings which needed to be properly damped and
controlled to preserve such stability and vigor. Beyond control
systems knowledge this required much diplomatic skill on the
part of those active in the Council (later Board) of AACC.
Fortunately, such skill and restraint was possessed by the
leadership. These sometimes fascinating developments generated
most of the history of JACC. Several
periods may then be distinguished including the founding of IFAC
and AACC.
1.2.1 Principal periods of AACC history
The history of AACC is a narrative of the motivations,
sometimes as undercurrents, the gradual understanding of
difficulties and evolution of remedies as in the JACC-ACC
transformation; brave experimentation in new areas like
sponsored research by AACC in ARC (the Automation Research Council); or hosting, so far, two IFAC
Congresses (in 1975 and 1996) along with developments of
committee and award structure, their administration and the
leadership by individuals in these developments. Some critical
documents, which were way stations, steered these developments
and are attached as appendices. A more complete but just
enumerative historical sequence is in the complete set
(assembled by Ted Williams) of Minutes of the AACC Council
(later called Board) meetings and now in the custody of the
current AACC secretary. Fundamental lists of time sequences of
awards and awardees, of JACC and IFAC meetings with names of
locations of the event and lists of names of AACC, JACC
officials and AACC delegates to IFAC are listed in Part 4 of
this report.
An overview with perspective of this history reveals the presence of about 5 time periods. Within each such period the course of events and the concerns of those managing and guiding AACC reveal a certain consistency and the building up of conditions leading to the concerns and events of the next period.
The list of the Periods follows with brief identification of their character. These notes will then be discussed in Part 1, i.e. this Preface, based on Part 2 where detailed elaboration follows.
Period 1 The Founding (1956-1960) of IFAC-AACC and its history is amply and stimulatingly chronicled in the writings of Harold Chestnut and Rufus Oldenburger [ ] [ ]. We will use part of these writings, the part most directly connected with AACC.
Period 2 (1961-1969) The post founding vigor. IFAC and JACC had a robust start respectively in the first IFAC congress in Moscow in 1960 and the first JACC at MIT in 1961. This strength and vigor continued till the later sixties. The development of a national awards structure and activity was beginning.
Period 3 (1969-1975) Recognition and Identification of problems and survey of potential remedies for JACC. Continuing development of the awards structure and the giving of the awards. Experimenting in ARC (Automation Research Council) with sponsored research by AACC. Organization and Preparations of the 1975 IFAC Congress in Boston.
Period 4 (1975-1981) Fading out of JACC and the founding of ACC. Establishing and planning ACC (American Control Conference).
Period 5 (1982-1997) The ACC age. The pinnacle was a grandiose IFAC Congress in 1996.
1.3 Summary history of the Periods
In the next section of this Preface the history of these
Periods will be summarized. In the rest of this writing fairly
detailed historical records of each are presented accompanied by
Appendices section by section consisting of some of the more
important documents on which the history text is based.
1.3.1 Period 1 (1956-1960) The founding of IFAC-AACC
After World War 2 and largely stimulated by the research in projects at
MIT a vigorous wave of explorative activity arose
at universities and in industry soon consolidating into the new
field of Automatic Control (today possibly more properly
described by the term of Systems and Control). There was a
wealth of intellectual excitement centering originally at MIT
and mostly on linear systems, Laplace transform was the main
tool. Toward the middle of the decade the center of activity
shifted to Columbia University and around Ragazzini (then
Chairman of EE), studying discrete linear systems with transform
techniques and educating a star studded large groups of
researchers (Kalman, Zadeh, Juri, Franklin, Bergen and many
others). Toward the end of the fifties a revolution arose led
by Kalman, Gilbert and other young Turks resulting within a very
few years in time domain methods largely replacing the
transform-based state of art at least on the theory side and
generating new insights and concepts like controllability and
observability. An upsurge of interest in systems in an
environment of random signals and with nonlinear dynamics
followed in the early sixties. In this atmosphere Harold
Chestnut, Rufus Oldenburger and their associates sensed the
right environment to establish worldwide scientific
communication and interaction through a robust and lasting
international engineering-scientific professional organization.
Through marvelous skill, tact and diplomacy they were able to
achieve this through the founding of IFAC (International
Federation of Automatic Control), reaching across the Iron
Curtain at the height of the cold war. IFAC became robust and
durable through its organization as an effective (neither too
tight nor too loose) federation of many nations each represented
by their National Member Organizations (NMO). By an equally
admirable act of diplomacy the founders were able to bring
together the largest engineering societies (IEEE, ASME, AICHE,
AIAA, ISA, SIAM and others) which were most active in control to
form AACC (American Automatic Control Council) as the National
Member Organization for the USA. There was of course no cold
war between these societies but of course there was a natural
defensiveness about protecting their territories.
To create a working and vigorous organization in such a complex environment required refined and highly sophisticated leadership as exhibited by Harold Chestnut and Rufus Oldenburger and the members of their international team with participants such as Lozier, N. Nichols, E. Vannah, V. Broida of France, and Ruppel of Germany.
The process also required time for early rather informal discussions starting in 1956 and culminating, in the first IFAC congress in Moscow in 1960 followed in 1961 by the first matured JACC in Boston at MIT. These years then span the founding referred to here as Period 1. Naturally, this period was dominated by establishing an international organization, IFAC, to serve as a bridge linking the emerging vigorous new field of Automatic Control (System and Control in a broad sense) worldwide. To build an IFAC clearly required setting up national member organizations to represent each member nation of IFAC.
A large variety of such national member organizations emerged dictated by the internal political structure of the member nations and ranging from agencies more or less directly tied to the government to no single available agency in the US which has no effective engineering wide organization either professionally or in the government. Control as such affects several engineering fields each having their robust professional organizations. The US also has clearly the dominating role in technology and needs to be the dominating factor in any international organization like IFAC. Therefore, founding IFAC required pulling together nations worldwide and pulling together major independent engineering societies in the US. On both international and national sides, there was a spirit of cooperation and a territorial defensiveness of the independence and territorial possessions of the participants. Remarkably, the goal of cooperative structures was accomplished on both sides.
The founding process of the IFAC-AACC-JACC complex is very well and interestingly chronicled by the founders Harold Chestnut and Rufus Oldenburger themselves in their published papers to which we refer the readers. The history of IFAC is outside the scope of this writing but a brief sketch of the AACC-JACC founding process will be presented here.
In the US, the development of AACC was a sort of internal core of the IFAC development and initially the two were growing in a direct union with each other. AACC started to acquire its own identity originally under the name of NACC (North American Control Council leaving an open door for Canada to join) soon changed to AACC which had its founding first meeting in Chicago on March 21, 19957. R. Oldenburger (ASME) acted as President V.E. and Vannah acted as Secretary-Treasurer and wrote the short but informative minutes of the first meeting. Societies involved initially and their representatives were Harold Chestnut (AIEE), E. Grebbe (IRE), J. Johnson (ISA), J. Hougen (AIChE). There was no clear cut agreement of cooperation and the major concern was planning for the first IFAC congress which eventually took place in 1960 although it was planned earlier at this time.
Incidentally, the first IFAC administrative meeting took place on September 6, 1956, with Harold Chestnut as leader or president, at which time AACC was not formally recognized or set up. Although this writing is not about IFAC history, the attendance of the first formal IFAC meeting will be included here as follows: V. Broida (finance Chairman), O. Grebbe (Germany), R. Oldenburger (USA), D.B.Welbourne (England), A.M. Letov (Russia), P.G.Novacki (Poland), and G. Ruppel (Germany) acting as secretary.
Accordingly then IFAC and AACC assumed an initial identity and vigorously proceeded to establish their identity by adopting initial Constitution and Bylaws and working out the any details required for organizing the first IFAC congress. This task was carried out by outstanding leaders and highly competent team remarkably well. The idea of AACC taking on a US national role such as the running of yearly JACC meetings in the US came up later.
The first formal meeting on March 21 was used for laying the basics of the organization, the election of Oldenburger as Chairman and Vannah as Secretary, and set up a $1,500 basic fund divided evenly among the five participating societies. J. Johnson and J. Hougen were appointed to draft an elementary Constitution and Bylaws noted that IFAC planned a meeting in 1960 but AACC will not.
The March 21, 1957 meeting was preceded by an informal but recorded meeting on November 29, 1956 sponsored by ASME to discuss US participation in a still informal international body. This was the first stirring of AACC. The March 21, 1957 meeting then was followed by another informal meeting with Chestnut, Lozier, Johnston, and Vannah in the latter's office in New York on August 14, 1957. Here, apparently, they considered teaming up with Canada (as North American Control Council NACC), because of funding matters, the scope of NACC beyond that of National Member organization NMO with IFAC, Canada declined.
The regular operation of AACC then began at the
Attended:
At this meeting, the first draft of the AACC Constitution was approved. Financial matters of the support of AACC and IFAC financed by the AACC member societies were accepted. The purpose and objective of AACC was stated.
Two quotations from the minutes of this meeting:
"NACC Constitution
This then is the description of the intended role of AACC at its beginning as the US National member organization within IFAC.
By the time of the next (##) AACC Council meeting on December 4, 1957, in Philadelphia, the first IFAC Congress was scheduled for 1960 and to take place in Moscow and the operating territory of IFAC-AACC was divided, as suggested by Letov the congress chairman, three ways:
So the #3 council meeting was the starting point for AACC in a business-like operation with a constitution an organization with officers and a Board (then called Council) consisting of representatives (later called directors) of its five member societies and a task of generating its part as the US National Member organization (NMO) of the first IFAC Congress in Moscow, three years down the road. This was quite a task. Yet, it became enhanced soon by the emergence of a second task, a domestic role in managing the interaction in the Systems and Control field of its member societies in the US. This later role eventually manifested itself primarily in a yearly Joint Automatic Control Conference beginning in 1961 in Boston at MIT and organized by AIEE. Two smaller and more informal AACC conferences were held previously in 1959 and 1960 organized by ______________and ISA.
IFAC also allows the use of its name as "IFAC Conference" on application and evidence of the appropriate quality of the meeting.
This history of Period #1, the Founding, will summarize the course of carrying out two tasks of AACC. It should be pointed out here that the history of IFAC is not a subject of this writing, except the role of AACC as part of the IFAC operations.
Thus, in 1960-1961, at the end of the planning period two major series of congresses/conferences were set up:
Everything beyond IFAC 1960 at this stage was relatively tentative and needed to be fitted together like it would be in a much more simple environment of starting any new series of large technical meetings just in the US. Interestingly, the second IFAC Congress in 1963 at this point #5 council meeting, was visualized to take place in the US with ISA trying to associate it with their annual meeting. The first IFAC Congress in the US actually took place in Boston in 1975.
The idea of a national US meeting run cooperatively by the member societies of AACC first surfaced in November 30, 1958, at the #6 AACC Council meeting where the name Joint Automatic Control Conference (JACC) was also selected. However, a future US role for AACC was mentioned occasionally ever since the #1 and #2 meetings of the AACC Council.
A few details of the planning process will now be mentioned. More details are available in 1.2, the text of the history and 1.3 the Appendices which contain some documents like Constitutions, Bylaws, etc. for Period of the founding process.
The history of founding years 1998-1961 contains a large complex of decisions to be made and procedures to be established and then carried out, constitutions, and bylaws drafted, adapted and then reformed in a short three years of setting up IFAC and AACC in 1957 and the first IFAC Congress in Moscow in 1960 such as:
After some meetings arranged through this process proved to be too cumbersome, it was modified to authors submitting the directly to the IFAC paper selection committee whose membership was selected or provided by the NMO's.
By the time of this reorganization, a program committee for JACC was established and operating. It then continued selecting the program for the yearly JACC.
JACC was developing its own difficulties resulting from the fact that the individual societies operated it in rotation (plus a university location and housing in dorms!) This eventually necessitated a change in format (accomplished in 1981/82 from JACC to ACC). These matters are discussed here in the history of Periods 2,3, and 4.
2. Finances. Their congresses/conventions are the principal activities for IFAC and AACC, but to have them they required a solid financial basis. The arrangement here was that the NMO's support IFAC financially even during the initial founding and organizing period. Then again, AACC itself is an association of five US societies, so the societies need to contribute collectively (initial contribution $1,500 for 1957 evenly divided, $300 each by the societies which then also supported AACC itself). This arrangement continued over the years with the amount of money needed slowly creeping up. Originally, the IFAC contributions were set in US dollars but later, because of instability, it was converted to Swiss Franks, which caused some stir. In any case, both IFAC Congresses and JACC conventions are roughly self-supporting. Again, some details follow in Periods 2,3, and 4.
3. Constitutions, Bylaws, Boards of Authority, Officials, Committees, etc., are needed to operate organizations of the kind of these two. Both acquired an initial rudimentary contribution within a few months of each other in 1956-57 as stated in the minutes of AACC (NACC) meetings #1 and #2. These then were again gradually amended and revised throughout Periods 2,3, and 4, each of which included a major revision as discussed for each of those periods in this text.
In its initial constitution, AACC is established (see #2, #2 above) as an association of five major independent professional societies (AIEE and IRE joined around 1960 and IEEE. A fifth major society AIAA joined.). These are now known as the Participating Societies which originally operated JACC in rotation and now operate it cooperatively as an individual organization, the American Control Conference ACC. A less involved, loosely connected class of members was established later of those not involved in operating JACC (ACC) and having no vote on the Board. The participating societies have equal rights and responsibilities (legally, financially, and in authority) and their membership was stable over the years (with one perturbation involving AIAA). The other group is much less stable. These are usually smaller and less deeply immersed in the field of Systems and Control.
The authority within both IFAC and AACC rests in their Boards with one delegate (now Director) representing each member (participating member) society. A deputy delegate stands by to substitute the delegate when he is unavailable. The Board meetings are usually open to officials, committee chairs and members and also visitors but all votes are cast by (deputy) delegates, i.e. directors of the participating societies, each having one vote.
Officers (with two-year terms) are the President, Vice President (effectively president elect), the Secretary and the Treasurer. The (vice) president calls and presides over al Board meetings (usually two in recent years).
The committee structure in addition to the Technical Committees linked to IFAC includes a steering committee for JACC set up in the #6 AACC meeting, November 30, 1958, under the leadership of Nat Nichols, an Operating Committee for ACC, a finance committee and others detailed below.
2. Annual AACC Conference.
3. AACC-affiliated societies hold no independent conferences on automatic control except as part of general meetings of these societies.
4. The joint annual conferences to be held under auspices of AACC with the understanding that they would constitute AACC's entire local technical meetings program.
5. N.Nichols appointed Chairman of AACC joint meetings Steering Committee.
6. Beginnings of the AACC Award structure seems to be the best paper around for the 1950 JACC given at the 1961 JACC to Leon Lapidus (AIChE) for his paper on "The Dynamics of Chemical Reactors".
7. Finally, the foundations of operation of JACC in the future were solidified by the constitutional amendment on operating JACC at the 9th council meeting on March 27, 1962.
8. Simultaneously, an extensive statement of the Bylaws effecting the operation of JACC was adopted. It seems to be apparent then that the years 1960 of the first IFAC Congress in Moscow and 1961 of the first robust JACC indeed represent the maturing of the IFAC-AACC-JACC complete the end of the #1` Period of founding and the beginning of the #2 Period of the Post Founding Vigor which will now be treated in the next Chapter on Period 2.
9. At the 14th AACC Council meeting, the first after IFAC 1960, Gerald Weiss was appointed Secretary (Vannah remained as Treasurer) destined for a long tenure.
First regular two year term (January 1960 to December 1961) election of AACC officers.
Presidential term divided with Oldenburger continuing as President to July 31, 1960 just after the first IFAC Congress then turning over to Lozier, Boye Vice President and Vannah, Secretary for both years.
1.3.2 Period 2 (1961-1969) of post founding vigor
This period was remarkable for its vigor and enthusiasm
possessing us who were then active in Automatic Control or were
getting interested, attracted by this particular atmosphere of
progress surrounding it. The background was the rapid
establishment of various analytical approaches based on
different versions of mathematics (differential equations,
transforms etc.) briefly described in the previous section 1.2.1
accompanied by a somewhat disjoint technological upswing in new
technologies personified most strikingly by the computer and the
solid state electronics that made it practical. That was an
atmosphere of scientific explosion which we can never forget and
which comes, may be, once in a lifetime.
The carefully forged IFAC-NMO (AACC) structure offered a communication-interaction entity which was to be desired in the atmosphere of rapid progress of the Automatic Control field. Not surprisingly both IFAC and AACC took off on a vigorous and progressive tracks. Both of their initial meetings the 1960, 1st IFAC Congress and the (first mature) 1961 JACC were meetings of historical significance new advances where announced (e.g. controllability, observability and the time domain version of the formulation of Systems and Control).
This spirit and good planning of the organization during the years of founding resulted in smooth operation, but still of course detail of such operation for AACC and JACC needed to be implemented and smoothed. Interaction with IFAC was quite smooth from the beginning also somewhat cumbersome because of the two level approach (by NMO and IFAC) on papers submitted to IFAC Congresses. This feature was eventually smoothed out by direct submission of papers to IFAC to its program committee staffed through the NMO structure.
Similar cumbersomeness resulted from the year by year rotation of JACC between the Societies with each years meeting being essentially independent with minimal cooperation and little planning from year to year. This arrangement resulted from an effort during the organization process to soothe the initial weariness in the Societies of losing their territory.
In the initial atmosphere of cooperation and enthusiasm these shortcomings caused little real problems and at the same time the existence of JACC even in this loose format demonstrated the need for such a national meeting. Eventulaly the JACC format was reorganized in a much smoother version (ACC) but it took until 1982 to run the first ACC. This development covering the transformation of JACC is one of the more interesting aspects of this history. But in Period 2 concerns were mostly with the establishment of the various practical aspects of the AACC organization and operation. The Constitution and Bylaws needed refinement to fit the needs of practical operation, an operating manual needed to be developed for the yearly independent JACC's as they existed. As AACC found and sensed its national stature it was a natural development to establish national Awards and issue them yearly. This was a rather long process. Starting with the Eckman Award for outstanding young researchers and in JACC Best Paper Award in Period 2 and eventually leading to the Control Heritage Award (later renamed Bellman Control Heritage Award) in Period 4, and the Control Hall of fame. A complete and highly regarded award structure exists today. This history will identify the status of the Award structure and its recipients for each period.
To fit the needs of the events the following set of 4 subsections will be summarized here and then expanded in the detailed history of 2.2.2 in Period 2
1.3.2.2 The first AACC Awards structure expanded in 2.3.2.2
1.3.2.3 The development of JACC expanded in 2.3.2.3
1.3.2.4 Experiments with Automation Research Council.
A preliminary summary of 1.3.2 , follows
1.3.2.1 Organization and management of AACC
The original documents organizing AACC were well thought out
and this fact indeed is one of the foundation stones which
accounts for the long range success of the IFAC-AACC operation.
However of necessity many details emerge and needed to be arranged
in the actual operation. This kind of activities mostly fill
Period 2. Committees need to be established (in mirror image
originally with IFAC) their operating rules established.
Constitution and Bylaws need to be refined, steering and operating committee
will be needed, meeting practices worked out. In fact these
type of functions largely filled the organization and operation
side of Period 2. Additional details however are presented in
2.2.2.1.
1.3.2.2 The first AACC Awards
The death of one of the pioneers of IFAC-AACC gave impetus of
funding (originally for ten years) of the Eckman Award for
outstanding young workers in the Automatic Control Field. This
became a highly regarded and much coveted award. A best paper
award later named after Hugo Schuck was actually born with JACC. These two then
formed the basis of the current well rounded and quite prestigious AACC
award structure. Details follow in 2.2.2.2.
1.3.2.3 The history of JACC
The JACC series had a strong start at the first mature meeting at MIT
in 1961. Its strength resulted in part from the great success of the first IFAC Congress in 1960 in Moscow. As already described there was an enthusiastic
pioneering spirit which attracted audiences passing 1,000 in the
early meetings. This attendance level started to shrink
somewhat toward the end of Period 2 but no general awareness of
serious difficulties developed in AACC. Some sources of
dissatisfactions however began to emerge, inconvenience of
academic location [dormitories!], predominance of theory results,
calling engineering practice applications and others started to
muddy the situation. These problems came to prominent attention
in Period 1.2.3.3 and 2.2.3.3. Nevertheless this matter
will also be discussed in more detail in 2.2.2.3.