Continuous path : the evolution of process control technologies in post-war Britain

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Abstract

Automation - the alliance of a series of advances in manufacturing technology with the
academic discipline of cybernetics - was the centre of both popular and technical
debate for a number of years in the mid-1950s. Alarmists predicted social disruption,
economic hardship, and a massive de-skilling of the workforce; while technological
positivists saw automation as an enabling technology that would introduce a new age
of prosperity. At the same time as this debate was taking place, increasingly
sophisticated control technologies based on digital electronics and the principle of
feedback control were being developed and applied to industrial manufacturing
systems. This thesis examines two stages in the evolution of process control
technology: the numerical control of machine tools; and the development of the small
computer, or minicomputer. In each case two key themes are explored: the notion of
industrial failure; and the role of new technologies in Britain's industrial decline.
In Britain, four projects were undertaken to develop point-to-point or
continuous path automatic controllers for machine tools in the mid-1950s - three by
electronics firms and one by a traditional machine tool manufacturer. However,
although automation was dominating popular debate at the time, the anticipated
market for numerically controlled systems failed to appear, and all of the early projects
were abandoned. It is argued that while the electronics firms naively misdirected their
limited marketing capabilities, the root of the problem was the traditional machine tool
manufacturers' conservatism and their failure to embrace the new technology.
A decade later, small computers based on new semiconductor technologies had
emerged in the United States. Originally developed for roles in industrial automation,
they soon began to compete at the low end of the mainframe computer market. Soon
afterwards a number of British firms - electronic goods manufacturers, entrepreneurial
start-ups, and even office machinery suppliers - began to develop minicomputers. The
Wilson government saw computers as a central element of industrial modernisation,
and thus a part of its solution to Britain's economic decline, so the Ministry of
Technology was charged with the promotion of the British minicomputer industry.
However, US-built systems proved more competitive, and by the mid-1970s they had
come to dominate the market, with the few remaining British firms relegated as niche
players. It is argued that government involvement in the minicomputer industry was
ineffectual, and that the minicomputer manufacturers' organisational cultures played a
major role in the failure of the British industry.

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