Fifty-Five Years in Control: The Story of the CSS

The IEEE Control Systems Society was established in 1954 and thus celebrates its fifty-fifth anniversary as the IEEE celebrates its 125 this year. As part of that celebration, we have compiled an overview of the history of this group. This paper will tell the story of the society as we have gleaned it from those who were around when it was founded, and who played critical roles in the development. As the science of control systems began to coalesce in the late 1940s, the push for some common understanding drove the various working groups towards a single organization. This organization came of age in the Cold War, when the push for practical solutions was matched by a need to rigorously understand this form of machine intelligence that despite its ancient origins was quite new in the engineering consciousness. In the past three decades, the CSS has transformed itself into a global organization with members and conferences in all parts of the world.