Two golden jubilees

Wm~N THE IFAC Journal Automatica started publication in 1969 there were relatively few archive journals devoted solely to the theory and practice of automatic control. In subsequent years the number of such journals has grown steadily, and quite recently several new journals concerned with various specialized aspects of control have appeared. However, the pioneer to all these journals first appeared 53 years ago in the U.S.S.R. In 1989 this prime Soviet control journal Avtomatyka i Telemekhanika celebrates its fiftieth year of publication. The journal was founded in 1936, with Academician A. A. Chernyshev as Editor, following a resolution passed at the First All-Union Conference in Automation, Remote Control and Transportation held in 1935. Publication was interrupted in the war years, 1941-1945, resuming with Volume 7 in 1946. In later years the journal doubled in size, jumping from 6 to 12 issues a year, and in 1957 (Volume 18) a cover-to-cover English translation started up under the title Automation and Remote Control, sponsored by the Instrument Society of America and currently published by Plenum Press, New York. A vtomatyka i Telemekhanika has always been closely associated with the Moscow-based Institute of Automation and Remote Control (now called the Institute of Control Sciences), which also celebrates its Golden Jubilee in 1989, having been founded in 1939 at the insistence of Academician V. S. Kulebakin, the first Chairman of a Committee for Automation and Remote Control established by the U.S.S.R. Academy of Sciences in 1938. In the late 1950s the Institute was an influential force in the formation of IFAC, with the U.S.S.R. as a Founding Member, and also in the subsequent organization of the First International Congress of IFAC, held in Moscow in June 1960. The IFAC Journal Automatica, now in its twentieth year of publication, salutes the Editorial Board of A vtomatyka i Telemekhanika (Editor-in-Chief: Academician V. A. Trapeznikov) and the staff of the Institute of Control Sciences (Director: Academician I. V. Prangishviii) on the occasion of these Golden Jubilees, and wishes them well for the future.