25 Years Ago

This article revisits some history of the IEEE Control Systems Society from the IEEE Centennial Lecture presented at the 1984 CDC conference meeting by Stephen Kahne in his article "Where Is the Beef?" (which originally appeared in IEEE Control Systems Magazine, vol. 5, no. 2, pp. 3-8, May 1985). It was in October 1954 that the Institute of Radio Engineers (IRE) started a Professional Group on Automatic Control (PGAC). Ehen the PGAC was started one of the main emphases was standards. In 1961, the American Institute of Electrical Engineers (AIEE) started the Technical Group on Automatic Control, which in fact was the first such technical group in the AIEE. The AIEE Professional Technical Group on Automatic Control was formed in 1963. In 1964, it changed its name to the Group on Automatic Control, and in 1971, to the Control Systems Society.