Arnold Tustin, (16 July 1899 – 9 January 1994), was a British

engineer Engineers, as practitioners of engineering, are professionals who invent, design, analyze, build and test machines, complex systems, structures, gadgets and materials to fulfill functional objectives and requirements while considering the limit ...

, and Professor of Engineering at the

University of Birmingham The University of Birmingham (informally Birmingham University) is a Public university, public research university located in Edgbaston, Birmingham, United Kingdom. It received its royal charter in 1900 as a successor to Queen's College, Birmingha ...

and at

Imperial College London Imperial College London (legally Imperial College of Science, Technology and Medicine) is a public research university in London, United Kingdom. Its history began with Prince Albert, consort of Queen Victoria, who developed his vision for a cu ...

, who made important contributions to the development of

control engineering Control engineering or control systems engineering is an engineering discipline that deals with control systems, applying control theory to design equipment and systems with desired behaviors in control environments. The discipline of controls o ...

and its application to

electrical machines In electrical engineering, electric machine is a general term for machines using electromagnetic forces, such as electric motors, electric generators, and others. They are electromechanical energy converters: an electric motor converts electricity ...

Biography

Tustin started working in 1914 at the age of 16 as an apprentice to the C. A. Parsons and Company, of

Newcastle upon Tyne Newcastle upon Tyne ( RP: , ), or simply Newcastle, is a city and metropolitan borough in Tyne and Wear, England. The city is located on the River Tyne's northern bank and forms the largest part of the Tyneside built-up area. Newcastle is ...

. He entered Armstrong College, later part of Newcastle University, in 1916, served in the Royal Engineers in World War I, and eventually received his Master degree in science in 1922. In 1922 he joined

Metropolitan-Vickers Metropolitan-Vickers, Metrovick, or Metrovicks, was a British heavy electrical engineering company of the early-to-mid 20th century formerly known as British Westinghouse. Highly diversified, it was particularly well known for its industrial el ...

(Metro-Vick) as a graduate trainee. In the early 1930s he worked for Metro-Vick in Russia for two years, advising and selling equipment to the government companies. Here, he wrote his first book on the design of electric motors, which was also translated into Russian. In the late 1930s and during

World War II World War II or the Second World War, often abbreviated as WWII or WW2, was a world war that lasted from 1939 to 1945. It involved the vast majority of the world's countries—including all of the great powers—forming two opposing ...

Tustin was working on the

Metadyne A metadyne is a direct current electrical machine with two pairs of brushes. It can be used as an amplifier or rotary transformer. It is similar to a third brush dynamo but has additional regulator or "variator" windings. It is also similar to an ...

constant-current DC generator for gun control.Institution of Engineering and Technology website
on IEE.org. He also developed new methods for gyroscopic stabilisation and further applied servo-mechanisms to tanks and naval guns. After the war, in 1947, he was appointed Professor of Engineering and head of the Department of Electrical Engineering at the

, a post in which he remained until 1955. In 1953-54 he had been Visiting Professor at

Massachusetts Institute of Technology The Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) is a private land-grant research university in Cambridge, Massachusetts. Established in 1861, MIT has played a key role in the development of modern technology and science, and is one of the ...

, and from 1955 to 1964 he was Professor of Engineering at

. Tustin was married to Frances Tustin, a pioneering psychotherapist and authority on autism. Tustin's primary concern has been in the field of electrical machines, but his interests extended into the fields of systems thinking,

control systems A control system manages, commands, directs, or regulates the behavior of other devices or systems using control loops. It can range from a single home heating controller using a thermostat controlling a domestic boiler to large industrial c ...

, and even

economics Economics () is the social science that studies the production, distribution, and consumption of goods and services. Economics focuses on the behaviour and interactions of economic agents and how economies work. Microeconomics analyzes ...

and

biology Biology is the scientific study of life. It is a natural science with a broad scope but has several unifying themes that tie it together as a single, coherent field. For instance, all organisms are made up of cells that process hereditary i ...

.Peter E. Wellstead (2008)
Systems Biology and the Spirit of Tustin
Retrieved 23 April 2008.

Publications

Tustin was the author of several books and many published papers on electrical machines, a selection. * 1952. ''Automatic and manual control: Papers contributed to the Conferences at Cranfield, 1951, Volume 1951, Deel 1'' Academic Press * 1952. ''Direct current machines for control systems'' * 1953, ''The Mechanism of Economic Systems'', Cambridge, MA. : Harvard Univ. Press., (2e ed. 1957) * 1956. ''The Next Ten Years of Electrical Engineering'' * 1957. ''Automatic Control''. With

Ernest Nagel Ernest Nagel (November 16, 1901 – September 20, 1985) was an American philosopher of science. Suppes, Patrick (1999)Biographical memoir of Ernest Nagel In '' American National Biograph''y (Vol. 16, pp. 216-218). New York: Oxford University Pr ...

;About Tustin * 1992, "Pioneers of Control: an interview with Arnold Tustin", Chris Bissell in: ''IEE Review'', June 1992, pp. 223–226 * 1994, "Arnold Tustin 1899-1994", Chris Bissell in: ''Int. J. Control'', Vol 60, No 5, Nov 1994, pp. 649 – 652

References

External links

Institution of Engineering and Technology website
{{DEFAULTSORT:Tustin, Arnold 1899 births 1994 deaths Engineers from Tyne and Wear British electrical engineers Systems engineers Academics of the University of Birmingham Metropolitan-Vickers people