The human body depends on myriad feedback mechanisms ensuring instantaneous adjustments to cell activity, for the correction of imbalances in temperature, hormone levels and other functions essential for life. A complicated engineering system such as a Boeing 748 Dreamliner is likewise crucially reliant on the presence of a web of feedback loops. These ensure that information from monitoring devices translates into corrective control action to suppress deviations from the desired flight path, prevent stalling, and so on.
John Westcott, who has died aged 93, was one of the pioneers in the study of feedback design in an engineering or biological context. Two names given to this study are control engineering and cybernetics. Along with advances in electronic communications, information theory and signal processing, progress in these fields grew out of second world war military research and the ensuing computer revolution.
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