In this clip, MIT Professor David A. Mindell gives a talk on his book Between Human and Machine: Feedback, Control and Computing Before Cybernetics (John Hopkins University Press, 2002). Despite the C-SPAN quality of the video, there are some interesting insights here.
Today, the relationship between feedback, control and computing is associated with Norbert Wiener's 1948 formulation of cybernetics. But the theoretical and practical foundations for cybernetics, control engineering, and digital computing were laid earlier, between the two world wars. In his book, David A. Mindell shows how the modern sciences of systems emerged from disparate engineering cultures and their convergence during World War II.
-- FROM THE VIDEO DESCRIPTION