Chapter 1.

History of Process Control

As one may see, the development of the process control is strongly related to the manufacturing
processes. These are traced in the ancient times of the humanity, starting with the metal, fabric
and pottery production. The industrial manufacturing and actually the engineering were the
innovations of the XVIIIth century, during the Industrial Revolution. The population increased
sensibly during this century, the population being inclined to consume more and better. The
consumerism led to an escalation in demand, both with regard to quantity and quality, for food,
clothing, footwear, housing, transportation, which stimulated the production of construction
materials, textiles, chemicals etc. Each global conflict, after its end (e.g. first and second World
Wars), induced the same behavior and the same reaction on behalf the society and production
companies. The production became mass production with huge quantities of products delivered
at deadlines and with a certain quality expectation. The mass production, under these
circumstances, could not be anymore controlled manually because of the expectations. In the
meantime, in the second half of the XXth century, the environment became important, fact which
imposed the environmental constraints on the manufacturers. Top on that, the globalization of
the economy amplified the competition among world companies and only those capable to
reduce costs and to respect the environment, resisted on the market. Together with these facts, an
important impact on the development of the technology and especially computing facilities had
the war and space race between the major world powers: the US and USSR. All these sequences
led to a tremendous development of the control equipment, techniques as a part of process
control development. Process control was seen as a major tool for development and complying
with the constraints.

Milestones in the modern history of control are C. Drebbel’s contribution in inventing the first
temperature control device for a furnace, around 1624, D. Papin invention of the first safety
valve for his steam engine – pressure regulator in1704, E. Lee’s first controlled positioning
system for a wind mill in 1745 (see Figure 1), T. Polzunov’s first level controller for his steam
engine (1765), J. Watt’s fly ball governor in 1768 – pressure regulator for his steam engine (see
Figure 2). The first obviously advanced combination between process engineering and process
control was H. Jacquard’s loom in 1801 (see Figure 3) which stored the model of the carpet on
punched cards. Actually, in that period in France, there were several looms having similar
control systems.

Figure 1.1 Figure1.2 Figure 1.3

The first publication in the field of control systems was elaborated by J.C. Maxwell in 1868 and
approached a theoretical analysis of the stability of Watt’s fly ball governor (1868) [1]. The next
papers on the subject of automatic control appeared only in the first half of the XX th century
(1922 - 1934) and have to be noted the first in the field of control in chemical/process
engineering [2-6].
A major innovation represented G. Philbrick’s “Automatic control analyzer – Polyphemus”,
actually the first analogue computer (1937-1938) just before the World War II [7]. The World
War II brought extremely important innovations in the field of automatic control: automatic
rudder steering, automatic gun positioning systems, automatic pilot of V1 and V2 etc. The
innovative ideas of Ziegler and Nichols about how to tune the controllers in a loop stem from
that time [8]

Immediately after the World War II, the field of process control exploded. It was helped by the
construction of the mega computers ENIAC (1946) [9] and UNIVAC (1951) [10], Shockley’s
patent on transistor (1950) [11] and Feynman’s premonition regarding nanospace expressed at
the American Physics Society Meeting in Caltech “There’s plenty of room at the bottom” (1959)
[12]. The new frontier of challenging the outer space launched by the US president John
Fitzgerald Kennedy produced the portable computer which influenced thoroughly the more
recent history of Process Control. The first process control computer system in a chemical plant
was installed in 1964 by Standard Oil California and IBM at El Segundo refinery in a FCC Unit,
under the name 1710 Control System [13].

Thus, there were practically three stages in Process Control development:

- the first of Measurement and Control Devices (World War I – mid XX th century),
dominated by manual control and operation of the industrial processes; there were
used sometimes field mechanical controllers;
- the second of Classical Feedback Control (1950s –1970s), when most of the
processes were supervised and controlled automatically in the simplest way –
feedback control; the control equipment was either electronic or pneumatic, rarely
hydraulic;
- the third stage of Computer Assisted Control (1970s – present) dominated, as main
feature, by the control systems involving a micro or minicomputer; most processes
are controllable and they need classical control systems, but around 20% of them
from process industry are less controllable and need Advanced Control techniques
and equipment.

The use of computers in process control can be detailed in several stages of complexity. In the
first stage of complexity a microchip to perform some calculations inside the controller or even
computer is embedded, allowing more complicated control algorithms: optimal, adaptive, fuzzy,
ratio, inferential, feed-forward control algorithms. A second stage of complexity is the Advanced
Process Control (APC) characterized by a combination of hardware and software control tools
used to solve complicated multivariable control problems or mixed integer-discrete control
problems. It involves the computer techniques (hardware and software) applied to control, the
good understanding of the process (process modeling and design), the good understanding of
control techniques and optimization (Model Predictive Control (MPC), Distributed Control
Systems (DCS) etc.). In the processes with multiple variables (hundreds or thousands) an
efficient operation of the process, of the plant or of the industrial platform, can be done only
through APC. Central Control Rooms looking like cosmic flight control centers are supervising
and operating the whole plant. New skills of the operators are requested, because the
implications of their actions are on a large scale. With APC one can save energy, raw materials,
time, reduce costs and make the processes more competitive in terms of quality and costs.The
third stage of complexity is expressed by the Wise Machinery (WM), a new concept which
involves not only complying the standards or set points, but also, the intervention without the
human assistance of the machine for its own functional efficiency and safety [14]. For that, the
WM involves the complex industrial equipment, the Data Acquisition System (DAS) and the
“Optimal Parametrical Control System (OPCS)” intended for operative and optimal solution of
all possible management tasks arising in vital activities process of the machine’s equipment in
the limits of its life cycle. PCS is based on Bio-cybernetic Control Systems (BCS) which is
principally a novel and industry evaluated decisions making system, which functions on the basis
of formalization the unconscious activity process of a brain in maintaining the functions of an
organism. It is a new civilization in itself.

Fig 1.4.

Bibliography

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– 283 [This is presumably the first scientific article on feed back control]
2. Minorsky, N. (1922), Directional stability of automatically steered bodies, J. Am. Soc.
Nav. Eng.,34, 280– [The article came after WWI when serious attempts for stabilization
of the rudder of the naval units have been done]
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