Process Control and Automation: The Bagrit Vision

Automation, broadly defined as the computer-assisted control of industrial processes, covers a wide spectrum of applications. Here we need to narrow the spectrum somewhat, so as to focus on the word automation as it might have been understood by people such as Leon Bagrit during the period 1948–1968. Of course, Bagrit’s view evolved over this period, just as the capabilities of digital computers evolved over the same period. This chapter charts the evolution.