W. Ross Ashby Digital Archive. Ross Ashby was one of the original members of the Ratio Club, a small informal dining club of young psychologists, physiologists, mathematicians and engineers who met to discuss issues in cybernetics. The club was founded in 1949 by the neurologist John Bates and continued to meet until 1958. The title of his book "An Introduction to Cybernetics" popularised the usage of the term 'cybernetics' to refer to self-regulating systems, originally coined by Norbert Wiener in "". The book dealt primarily with homeostatic processes within living organisms, rather than in an engineering or electronic context. Earlier, in 1946, Alan
Norbert Rillieux Lives and Ideas of Black American Innovators" (pp. 42–44) Norbert Rillieux Norbert Rillieux (March 17, 1806 – October 8, 1894) was an American inventor who was widely considered one of the earliest chemical engineers and noted for his pioneering invention of the multiple-effect evaporator. This invention was an important development in the growth of the sugar industry. Rillieux, a French-speaking Creole, was a cousin of the painter Edgar Degas. Norbert Rillieux was born into a prominent Creole family in New Orleans, Louisiana. He was the son of Vincent Rillieux, a white plantation owner, and his placée, Constance Vivant, a free