毕业设计的论文中英翻译.doc

Anti-Aircraft Fire Control and the Development of Integrated Systems at Sperry The dawn of the electrical age brought new types of control systems. Able to transmit data between distributed components and effect action at a distance, these systems employed feedback devices as well as human beings to close control loops at every level. By the time theories of feedback and stability began to become practical for engineers in the 1930s a tradition of remote and automatic control engineering had developed that built distributed control systems with centralized information processors. These two strands of technology, control theory and control systems, came together to produce the large-scale integrated systems typical of World War II and after. Elmer Ambrose Sperry (I860-1930) and the company he founded, the Sperry Gyroscope Company, led the engineering of control systems between 1910 and 1940. Sperry and his engineers built distributed data transmission systems that laid the foundations of today’s command and control systems. Sperry’s fire control systems included more than governors or stabilizers; they consisted of distributed sensors, data transmitters, central processors, and outputs that drove machinery. This article tells the story of Sperry’s involvement in anti-aircraft fire control between the world wars and shows how an industrial firm conceived of control systems before the common use of control theory. In the 1930s the task of fire control became progressively more automated, as Sperry engineers gradually replaced human operators with automatic devices. Feedback, human interface, and system integration posed challenging problems for fire control engineers during this period. By the end of the decade these problems would become critical as the country struggled to build up its technology to meet the demands of an impending war. Anti-Aircraft Artillery Fire Control Before World War I, developments in ship design, guns, and armor drove the need for improved fi