Several new engineering research areas emerged from the Servomechanism Laboratory of MIT between 1950 and 1970. This book contains a historical description of this research and development work, which included numerical control (NC), computer-aided manufacturing, and computer-aided design. The first NC machine was developed in the early 1950s, followed by the development of the first version of the APT (automatically programmed tool system) computer software and the first attempts to develop the concepts of computer-aided design.

The book outlines the strategies involved in developing important new technologies from the conceptual stage to industrial application. The characteristics of the innovation process, the scope of the research undertaken in the MIT Servomechanism Laboratory, and the environment in which it took place are described. The author introduces the people working on these projects, the problems associated with financing the work, the difficulties encountered, the actual chronological sequence of the development work, and the results obtained. The book is interesting for someone already expert in the field who wants to learn about its historical development, but it is not for the novice who wants to learn about numerical control.