This is the first book, to our knowledge, to bring together the previously diverse technological fields of positioning servomechanisms, speed governors, pneumatically operated industrial controllers, and temperature regulators. This unification is greatly aided by the adoption โข by the authors, for the first time in any complete text, of the unified terminology (as well as the symbols) recommended recently by a joint committee of the engineering societies.
The theoretical treatment of the closed-loop control system, covered in the first six chapters, is based on the authors' previous text Automatic Regulation which was privately published in 1947 and which has been used since then as the text in courses given by Mr. Ahrendt at the University of Maryland. There is a profusion of graphs and charts, greatly clarifying the presentation. The essential mathematical treatment is given in a clear and simple form, starting with the setting up and Laplace transform solution of ordinary linear differential equations, then progressing to the more important complex variable and frequency spectrum methods of analysis.
The remaining seven chapters cover design considerations, nonlinearity and discontinuity, and examples in the industrial and military fields. A very comprehensive set of problems, with answers, suitable for either self study or teaching, is appended.
This text may well be considered seriously by the pedagogue as a teaching text, as it fills a long standing need for a unified treatment of the several fields in which automatic feedback control is important today.
B. B. YOUNG