Chapter 8: The second Paper

Two months after his Eurekamoment in September 1948, Walter Evans submitted his manuscript for his Root Locus Paper on what he initially called the "Locus of Roots" method. By March 1949, in his first rewrite, he had renamed it “Root Locus.” This chapter details the struggle Evans faced in getting his paper accepted for publication. Reviewers of his manuscript gave Evans negative feedback. The story begins in May 1949, six months after his draft initial submission, at the peak of his frustration.

The AIEE has now had the Root Locus Paper for nearly six months.

On Saturday, May 7, 1949, at the Polo Grounds, the New York Giants delivered a 9-1 drubbing to the St. Louis Cardinals—the hometown team of twenty-nine-year-old electrical engineer and baseball fan Walter R. Evans. A third-generation St. Louisan, Evans lived in Whittier, California, about 15 miles east of Los Angeles, with his wife Arline (also a third-generation St. Louisan) and their two young sons, Randy (4) and Gregory (1).

Despite Saturday being a day off, Evans was angry. But his frustration had nothing to do with baseball and everything to do with six months of waiting.

In December 1948, he had submitted his second servomechanisms paper to the American Institute of Electrical Engineering (AIEE). Just as in 1947, he found himself caught in the agonizingly slow review process. He had already missed the 1949 Winter General Meeting because one critic complained about the paper’s length. Now, two months after submitting a shorter version, he was still in the dark about its acceptability. Would it take a full year—just as it had with his 1947 graphical analysis paper—before his new "root locus" idea would get a hearing at a general meeting? Were open-minded reviewers assessing his work, or was his paper in the hands of close-minded critics? At work, younger engineers embraced his new method, while some senior ones seemed annoyed at being asked to rethink their approach.

Frustrated, he sat down to vent his anger toward the one person he believed controlled the fate of his paper: Professor Gordon S. Brown, founder and director of MIT’s Servomechanism Laboratory and chairman of the AIEE Technical Program Committee’s servomechanism subcommittee.

"The AIEE has now had the Root Locus Paper for nearly six months... In my humble opinion, this is a pathetic record for an Institute that claims the ‘dissemination of new theories’ as one of its fundamental aims. This is a subject on which I might write in undeniably clear language—if I thought it would do any good."

He finished the draft of his letter and set it aside.

Later that evening, Evans returned to his draft. Should he send it? What good would it do? His mind churned. Creative but impatient by nature, he seldom settled on the first solution that came to him. Instead, he sought out alternate perspectives that might reveal a better approach. He knew that John Moore and Gordon Brown had met recently, likely discussing his paper. Moore would surely report back soon.

Though we cannot read Evans’ mind, we know what he did: he rewrote the letter, this time laced with sarcasm and a veiled threat to publish elsewhere.

Brown: “The root locus idea has been chasing around for six months in some ‘multiple loop’ with no visible ‘output.’ The only ‘feedback’ has been rejection and your recent letters. There must be something ‘nonlinear’ in the system… The obvious alternative is to submit the paper to a different organization."