AA Guns and the Birth of Cybernetics

[snowmit]

In the 1930s the UK had the following bombing defence policy: “The bombers will always get through.” Which, in my opinion, is a perfectly wonderful stiff-upper-lip attitude to have. Then radar was invented and it became possible to track planes. Actually shooting them turned out to be stunningly difficult.

Comments

[somerled]

The AA shells are also constrained by range and to remain on their ballistic tracks. The plane's computer can calculate a safe path through the known shell arcs

[zamp]

If you read more about navel battles during WWII it becomes clear that AA defenses on ships were outmatched by the planes and pilots of the time.

When the Yamato (a ship with AA defenses as good as any ship of the time) was sunk, it and it's task force downed only 10 of the 300 planes sent to sink it.

Interceptor planes turned out to be a much better defense against attacking planes.

[snowmit]

Oh yes. Wiener's work doesn't get finished in time to implement is for WW2. They go with radar and a linear prediction model because it can be done in time for the war. What fascinates me about it is the alternative way of conceptualizing the problem and the change in the landscape of the sciences that is the fallout of his work.

[___blank___]

I think the usual term for this is feedback though, not cybernetics! Isn't this just all part of control theory? That has been long been involved in many aspects of human motion and control of other processes through a system which filters those motions and controls.

But very interesting history!

[snowmit]

Wikipedia says what I wanted to say better then I'd have said it.
Cybernetics is the interdisciplinary study of the structure of regulatory systems. Cybernetics is closely related to control theory and systems theory. Both in its origins and in its evolution in the second-half of the 20th century, cybernetics is equally applicable to physical and social (that is, language-based) systems.