Cybernetics or Control and Communication in the Animal and the Machine.

WIENER, Norbert.

$25,000.00

Item Number: 142984

New York: John Wiley & Sons, 1948.

First edition of “this seminal work…comparable in ultimate importance to…Galileo or Malthus or Rousseau or Mill” (Saturday Review). Octavo, original cloth. Association copy, inscribed by the author on the front free endpaper, “From Norbert Wiener To Karl Wildes In honor of our long friendship.” Wiener presented this copy to Wildes who was long associated with the MIT Department of Electrical Engineering and Computer Science. Near fine in a very good dust jacket. First editions are rare signed, association copies exceedingly so.

Acclaimed one of the "seminal books... comparable in ultimate importance to... Galileo or Malthus or Rousseau or Mill," Cybernetics was judged by twenty-seven historians, economists, educators, and philosophers to be one of those books published during the "past four decades," which may have a substantial impact on public thought and action in the years ahead" (Saturday Review). Cybernetics or Control and Communication in the Animal and the Machine is the first public usage of the term "cybernetics" to refer to self-regulating mechanisms. The book laid the theoretical foundation for servomechanisms (whether electrical, mechanical or hydraulic), automatic navigation, analog computing, artificial intelligence, neuroscience, and reliable communications.