Arthur David Hall III

 

Arthur David Hall III (1925 - 31 March, 2006 Fredericksburg, Virginia, USA) was an American electrical engineer and a pioneer in the field of systems engineering. He is known as author of a widely used engineering textbook "Methodology of Systems Engineering" from 1962.^[1]

Biography

Hall attended Brookville High School in Lynchburg, Virginia. He served in the Army during World War II. After the war he studied electrical engineering at Princeton University, graduating in 1949.

Hall worked for many years at as an electrical engineer for Bell Labs prior to forming his own consulting business. In the 1960s, Hall also worked at the Moore School of Electrical Engineering at the University of Pennsylvania.

He was a founding member of the Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers. In 1965, Hall was the first editor of the IEEE Transactions on Systems Science and Cybernetics. Hall later became a senior IEEE fellow.

He is listed in Who’s Who Men of Science as the father of the picture telephone and creator of the patented Auto Farm System, which provides global positioning equipment for precision farming.

His further hobbies included flying, yachting, photography, and gardening.^[2]

Work

Hall made contributions to systems engineering methodology, and applications to telecommunications policy and practice.

A Methodology for Systems Engineering

Hall's "A Methodology for Systems Engineering" from 1962 is among the earliest significant books directly related to systems engineering. Two other books are "System Engineering: An Introduction to the Design of Large-Scale Systems" (1957) from Harry H. Goode and Robert E. Machol and the "System Engineering Handbook" (1965) from Robert E. Machol ea. These both cover also cover the philosophy and methodology of systems engineering, but are directed primarily at large military systems and are less useful for other applications. Hall's "A Methodology for Systems Engineering" was the first to covers both philosophical and technical aspects of systems engineering.^[3]

Motives for systems engineering

The motives for conceiving modern systems engineering are to be found partly in past disasters. Arthur D. Hall in Metasystems Methodology (1989) cites:

• the chemical plant leakage in Bhopal (1986);
• the explosion of the NASA Challenger space shuttle (1986) and
• the Apollo fire (1967);
• the sinking of the Titanic (1912);
• the nuclear explosion in Chernobyl (1986) and
• the disaster at Three Mile Island power plant (1979).

He cites, too:

• the capture of markets by Japan from the U.S.,
• the decline in US productivity and
• the failure of the US secondary school system.

Hall identifies the millions of people dying of starvation every year while other nations stockpile surplus food, medical disasters such as heart disease, while governments subsidize grains used to produce high cholesterol meat, milk and eggs; and many more. One implication is clear: systems engineering faces challenges well beyond the sphere of engineering.^[4]

Systems engineering process approach

The Systems engineering process is approached and modelled in different ways. One of these approaches origins from Arthur D. Hall from 1962, and is taken up by A. Buechel (1969) and R. Haberfellner et al. (2002). from ETH-Zurich. Four basic ideas characterizing their approach:^[5]

1. Proceeding should be made from the general to the particular and not the opposite way, the "Top Down Approach": large systems should not be designed in detail without checking different variants of solution.
2. Observing the principle of Developing Variants: you should not to be satisfied with a single first variant but always look for alternatives.
3. Dividing the process of system development and system implementation into Project Phases. The phases define the macrologic, the management-approach to SE.
4. Using the problem solving cycle (PLC) as a kind of working- and thinking logic: This cycle is composed of 3 steps: search for objectives, b. search for solutions and selection

Publications

Hall wrote several textbooks and article on systems and systems engineering. Books:

• 1962, A methodology of Systems Engineering.
• 1989, Metasystems Methodology, Oxford, England: Pergamon Press.

Articles, a selection:

• 1956, Definition of System, with Robert E. Fagen, in: General Systems, 1 (1956), p. 18.
• 1965, Systems Engineering from an Engineering Viewpoint in: IEEE Transactions on Systems Science and Cybernetics, Nov. 1965, Volume: 1, Issue: 1. On page(s): 4-8
• 1969, Three-Dimensional Morphology of Systems Engineering, in: IEEE Transactions on Systems Science and Cybernetics. 5(2) pp. 156-160.

References

1. ^ http://www.ieeesmc.org/Newsletter/June2006/index.php?id=obit
2. ^ Princeton memorials
3. ^ systems engineering by Brittanica. 2007
4. ^ Systems Engineering Philosophy, Extracts from: Hitchins, D.K., 2003.
5. ^ Reinhard Haberfellner & Olivier de Weck, Agile SYSTEMS ENGINEERING versus AGILE SYSTEMS engineering, Fifteenth Annual International Symposium of the International Council On Systems Engineering (INCOSE), 10 July to 15 July 2005, p.3-4.

External links

• Princeton memorials

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