Arnold Tustin

Arnold Tustin, (1899-1994), was a British engineer, and Professor of Engineering at the University of Birmingham and at Imperial College London, who made important contributions to the development of Control Engineering [Malcolm C. Smith (1997), [http://www.cai.cam.ac.uk/students/study/engineering/engineer97/control.htm The Development of Control Engineering in Britain and the Cambridge Contribution] , retrieved 23 April 2008.] and its application to electrical machines.

Biography

Arnold Tustin was born in 1899. He was apprenticed to the Parsons Company of Newcastle upon Tyne at the age of 16 and attended Armstrong College (later incorporated into Newcastle University). After completing his degree studies he joined Metropolitan-Vickers (MV) as a graduate trainee.

At Metropolitan-Vickers he worked on the Metadyne constant-current DC generator for gun control. This work began in 1937-38 and continued during World War II. [http://www.iee.org/events/tustin2006.cfm Institution of Engineering and Technology website] on IEE.org.]

He was Professor of Engineering and head of the Department. of Electrical Engineering at the University of Birmingham from 1947 to 1955 and at Imperial College London from 1955 to 1964 and a Visiting Professor at Massachusetts Institute of Technology in 1953-54.

Work

Tustin was the author of many published papers on electrical machines, but his interests were much wider than engineering, for he was a polymath who brought a systems approach to each of the many areas that he touched. In the modern jargon he thought ‘outside the box’ and in doing so championed the use of control systems theory beyond its traditional limits, applying a systems approach to such areas as economics and biology. It is the use of a systems approach and his interest in biology that connects him to the theme of the 2008 Tustin Lecture - 'Systems Biology and the Spirit of Tustin'. [ Peter E. Wellstead (2008), [http://www.hamilton.ie/SystemsBiology/Publications.html#reports Systems Biology and the Spirit of Tustin] . Retrieved 23 april 2008.]

Servomechanism

During WWII Tustin was concerned with design of massive gun turrets and wanted to make their servomechanism response compatible with human control. Through laboratory experiments and tedious paper and pencil analysis he demonstrated an approximate “linear law” plus “remnant” consistent with a describing function analysis. He explored various “aided gun-laying” schemes to improve aiming performance. [Richard W. Pew (2005), [http://www.cogsci.rpi.edu/cogworks/IMoCS/talks/Pew.ppt. Some History of Integrated: Human Performance Models] , BBN Technologies, March 2, 2005. Retrieved 23 april 2008.]

After the war Arnold Tustin worked with Percy Daniell and Arthur Porter important figures in automatic control. Daniell translated American work by Bode and Norbert Wiener so that British engineers could understand it. [ John Aldrich (2007), [http://www.economics.soton.ac.uk/staff/aldrich/Daniell%20and%20probability.pps. "Percy Daniell and the British Probability Tradition(s)"] , Retrieved 23 april 2008.]

Feedback

Tustin defined feedback as the fundamental principle that underlies all self-regulating systems, not only machines but also the processes of life and the tides of human affairs. For hundreds of years a few examples of true automatic ppcontrol systems] have been known. A very early one was the arrangement on windmills of a device to keep their sails always facing into the wind. It consisted simply of a miniature windmill which could rotate the whole mill to face in any direction. The small mill’s sails were at right angles to the main ones, and whenever the latter faced in the wrong direction, the wind caught the small sails and rotated the mill to the correct position. With steam power came other automatic mechanisms: the engine-governor, and then the steering servo engine on ships, which operated the rudder in correspondence with movements of the helm. These devices, and a few others such as simple voltage regulators, constituted man’s achievement in automatic control up to about 20 years ago. [ Arnold Tustin(1952), "FEEDBACK" , in: "Scientific American". Issue: Sep, 1952.]

Quotes

* When beliefs need some modification, we make it with much trepidation, for our world is then new, and things seem all askew, ‘til we’re used to the new formulation.

Publications

Tustin was the author of several books and many published papers on electrical machines.
* 1953, "The Mechanism of Economic Systems", Cambridge, MA. : Harvard Univ. Press.,

;About Tustin
* 1992, "Pioneers of Control: an interview with Arnold Tustin", Chris Bissell in: "IEE Review", June 1992, pp. 223-226
* 1994, "Arnold Tustin 1899-1994", Chris Bissell in: "Int. J. Control", Vol 60, No 5, Nov 1994, pp. 649 - 652

References

External links

* [http://www.iee.org/events/tustin2006.cfm Institution of Engineering and Technology website]