Automation's Finest Hour: Bell Labs and Automatic Control in World War II

Abstract

During World War II, engineers at Bell Telephone Laboratories applied their expertise in communications to the control of machinery. They designed and built a gun director that employed electronic circuits and servomechanisms to perform calculations. This device replaced earlier mechanical directors and, when integrated with new microwave radars, proved particularly successful at shooting down the V-1 "buzz bombs" - early cruise missiles. By applying theories of feedback amplifiers to servomechanisms and automatic control systems, Bell Labs engineers merged electronic messaging with technological power. This article outlines the contributions of Bell Telephone Laboratories to "system engineering" of anti-aircraft guns. Detailing the labs' more significant projects illustrates how techniques originally developed for the telephone system acquired utility and conceptual power when applied to military problems. The products of this research, tempered by war, were then adapted to general problems in electronics, communications, and information systems. Research into control systems, which addressed computing, noise and prediction, and communications theory, shaped today’s information society as much as did the digital computer itself.