"The Industrial Instrument-Master of Industry, Servant of Management": Automatic Control in the Process Industries, 1900-1940

Abstract

Herbert H. Dow, founder of the Dow Chemical Company, opined in 1930 that industrial development rested on three basic technical advances: firstly the steam engine inaugurating power production, then interchangeable parts making possible mass production, and third, an advance still in its infancy, automatic operation by automatic control of continuous He thought the latter occupied a position in the process industries akin to that of interchangeable parts in the assembly industries.' From the 1890s onward, Dow sought to reduce the number of people employed in the production process. His strategy was to increase plant size, use automatic analysis and automatic operation of the equipment governed by automatic analysis, and develop automatically controlled and operated continuous processes. By automatic control Dow meant closed-loop feedback control, and the Dow Chemical Company developed its own electrically operated controllers during the 1920s.2 During this same period, specialist