Process control practice and education: Past, present and future

Process control is a relatively young field, with commercial PID-type controllers developed largely in the 1930′s. Initial publications were applications-focused and authored primarily by instrumentation and control vendors. While some chemical engineering departments had instrumentation and control courses by the 1940′s, process control textbooks with a theoretical basis did not appear until the mid-1950′s, yet by 1950 there was already a...