Traces the consolidation of a specialty, as the various feedback control devices used in the 1930s for aircraft and ships, the telephone system, and analogue computers, were brought together during World War II to form what is now known as the classical frequency response methods of analysis and design, and applied to non-linear, sampled-data, and stochastic systems. Follows the field's development through the post-war addition of the root locus method to the introduction of the state-space methods of modern control. Distributed by INSPEC. Annotation copyright by Book News, Inc. , Portland, OR