Computers and cybernetics

1. The computers or high-speed electronic machines of today have created entirely new technical possibilities in automatic control of industrial processes. First designed for solving mathematical problems, they soon paved the way for a new field of science—cybernetics that studies general principles of control both in live and non-live systems.

2. The importance of cybernetics is particularly great in the sphere of engineering sciences. A newly developed field of knowledge is technical cybernetics. Its objectives are to control automatic industrial processes, to study problems of transmission of information and to develop new principles of automatic control.

3. The development of a control computer begins with the study of the objects or units to be controlled. This is followed by the development of working hypotheses about the character of processes taking place in the units, and finally, elaboration of control algorithms.

4. The quantitative relationships of the process being controlled are described by mathematical equations linking together certain functions, some of which are known and others are to be found.

5. The computing device is inserted into the automatic control circuit and made to find optimum solutions to the above-mentioned equations, and control the process, securing the most efficient operation on the basis of computed results.

6. The unit being controlled has transducers which determine the initial conditions and values in the equations being solved.

7. Using the optimum solutions the computing unit of the machine produces the data necessary to form the control signals. The control elements are actuated by operational units specially designed for the purpose. The modified process variables are again fed to the computing device and the cycle of control is repeated.

8. One of the main problems of technical cybernetics is the development of control algorithms to be used in processing and control of information flows. The algorithms worked out for employment in control machines are called programs. These are based on subdivision of the computation process into simple arithmetical operations and on determitiation of the logical operations to be performed with a view to fulfil ths program which gives the sequence of the machine's operations, and must be coded or expressed in the adopted code system.

9. Two systems of computers are now created for control computer design. One of these is the development of general-purpose control machines which may have much wider application but require more complicated logical circuitry and a greater number of instructions and commands employed in the computer. This approach permits control of a great variety of industrial units with the aid of one and the same computer.

10. The second system utilizes modern microcomputer techniques to develop special-purpose machines designed to control a particular process. This leads to the creation of more easily operated, and low-cost control computers. Tests of some control computers manufactured for specific industrial units have shown their efficiency and quite sufficient reliability.

11. In the Soviet Union, both systems of control are applied. Extensive work is carried out in research and design to create special-purpose control computers. Centralized systems of automatic control for industrial plants by means of general-purpose computers are being created.

12. Electronic digital computers perform both arithmetical and logical operations, making it possible to govern processes under rather complicated conditions.

Mathematical devices of continuous action are employed in control machines to direct various technological processes.

13. Application of control computers in industry calls for a great advance in all related branches of science and engineering. Modern measuring instruments must ensure the desired speed and accuracy of measurement of all process variables and initial data necessary for solving a problem.

A considerable increase in the number of variables to be measured and exacting requirements of speed and accuracy of their measurement call for entirely new physical methods and metrological instruments. Control computers signify a tremendous advance in the development of automatic control systems for industrial processes.

V. Ответьте на следующие вопросы:

1. What are computers used for? 2. What is information and why do we need it? 3. What are the main parts of a computer? 4. What is an algorithm? 5. What types of computers are used today? 6. What is a program? 7. What is a command and how does a computer obey the command?

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