The works of feedback control systems have been around for a long time; dated back as far as

humanity could tell. Through the help of our historical records, we can identify several of these man-
made feedback control system devices which improved from time to time. Additionally, we can also look
at some discoveries on several techniques in optimizing different control system configurations.

Before the Greeks, both the Egyptians and the Chinese invented the clepsydra (a water vessel
with an orifice at the bottom) and the sundial respectively for the purpose of measuring time. But
sundials don’t work on night time while clepsydra don’t output time at constant rate. To solve these
problem, Ktesibios, a Greek scholar invented his Water clock around 300 B.C. which is an improvement
of the clepsydra. In order to give a desire constant time reading, he design a system that maintains a
constant level of water inside a vessel which supplies a tickling water to another smaller container that
has a float bulb mechanism. This mechanism is responsible for telling time via the graduated time scale
attached to it and the amount of water that flows to the vessel.

Another remarkable contribution of liquid-level control was done by Philon of Byzantium. He

was working on oil lamps and his goal was to have a distinct amount of oil to be supplied in the lamp.
The oil lamp configuration was consist of two vessels; the oil storage and the oil pan where the floating
wick is located. The oil storage is located on the upper portion while the oil pan is resting below it and
both containers were connected by a pipe and a capillary tube. Both the capillary tube and the pipe has
their opening ends on the surface of the oil pan while the other ends connect the oil storage on the
bottom and top respectively. When the oil level at the oil pan drops to a level lower than the opening
end of the pipe, air will infiltrate through the pipe thus, pushing the oil inside the oil storage to flow
through the capillary tube and then supplying down to the oil pan. Otherwise, no oil flow may happen
on the capillary tube because of the absence of air inflow through the pipe. Another related works on
liquid-level control was also published by Heron of Alexandria around 1 st century B.C. in his famous book
known as “Pneumatica”.

Pressure Vessel was one of old technologies used by humanity and this type of innovation also
requires maximum safety. A safety Valve mechanism was used by Denis Papins around 1681 which is
installed on the top of a pressure vessel that contains steam fluid. A calculated weight is attached on top
of the safety valve which adjust the desire or allowable internal pressure of the steam inside the vessel.

The emerging era of industrial revolution around the 17 th and 18th century improved the quality
of life of our human civilization. One example was livestock, in which a scholar from Holland, Cornelis
Drebbel invented a Mechanical Temperature Control Egg-Hatchery which increased production. This
device used two vials, Alcohol and Mercury that serve as feedback sensors attached inside the walls of
the hatchery which respond to the internal temperature condition. A float bulb is attached from the
vials to a regulator which adjusts the intensity of the flame inside. Another example was the first
automatic feedback controller used in the steam engine industry and it was designed by James Watt
known as the “Flyball Governor Speed Controller” in 1769. Its sole purpose was to regulate the speed of
the steam engine by adjusting the steam valve responsible for supplying power to the engine. A flyball
governor mechanism was used to capture the instantaneous speed of the output shaft via mechanical
linkages and gears and used it to control the steam valve. The flyball spins closer or farther from its axis
depending on the resulting inertia generated from the angular speed of the output shaft.

Another feedback control system innovation that came during the industrial period was the
windmill speed control by Edmund Lee in 1745 which adjust the windmill blades’ angle of attack to a
desired inclination that would give the maximum output over a wide range of local wind speeds on a
particular area. An improvement from its blade design was established by William Cubitt in 1809 using a
movable louvers smaller than the former blade configuration.

A control System should need to have a good performance and stability base on the parameters
involved. This proposition was established around the 19 th century and it was James Clerk Maxwell who
published the stability criterion of the third-order system based on the coefficient of Differential
Equation. In 1874, Eduard John Routh extended this criterion up to fifth-order in which it has been
ignored by Maxwell. Later on, he published an award winning Adams Prize resulting his work to be
known as the Routh-Hurwitz Criterion for stability. In 1892, a Russian student of University of St.
Petersburg, Alexandr Mikhailovich Lyapunov extended Routh’s work on stability to non-linear systems.
Another practical development made on the mid 1800’s was the stability of the ship’s steering
mechanism. . In 1874, Henry Bessemer, using a gyro to sense a ship’s motion and applying power
generated by the ship’s hydraulic system, moved the ship’s saloon to keep it stable. Another method of
this type was also used to stabilize ships such as pendulums and other gyroscopic sensors.

During the 20th century, more and more developments in control system performance emerged.
One of these was the contribution of Nicholas Minorsky, a Russian who was famous for his proportional-
plus-integral-plus-derivative (PID) controller that improve the performance of automatic control
systems. Between 1920’s and 1930’s, H.W. Bode and h. Nyquist at Bell Telephone Laboratories discover
a control system analysis and design techniques using sinusoidal frequency signal. Later in 1948, an
aircraft worker Walter Evans developed a graphical technique to plot roots of the characteristic equation
for feedback control systems at a wide range of varying parameters. This was later known as the root
locus analysis.

Nowadays, control systems are already dominating our technological society. It keeps on
changing from time to time as a result of seeking a robust design as possible. It has already been
transformed from the classical style to the digital control system. Numerous applications can be found in
the space industry especially on navigation, positioning and data acquisition. Not only that, a lot of
innovations are also imparted in the field of manufacturing such as high-end CNC machines and
computer guided utility robots. Even in our very own home, we can also find several devices that use
control systems such as our oven toasters, DVD players and washing machines.