Abstract This paper presents an analysis on subharmonic oscillations as responses of nonlinear feedback control systems. The non-linearities treated in this paper are those whose input-output characteristic curves show saturating or limiting characteristics and are skew symmetric with respect to their origins. The analysis shows that the outputs of such nonlinear systems will oscillate either with the input frequencies or with odd order subharmonics of the input frequencies. This paper also presents a design aid for eliminating the possibility of subharmonic oscillations. Electronic analog computer techniques were employed to obtain the experimental results presented here.