1. This paper is the revised version of a presentation held at the ICOHTEC/Newcomen Society sym-posium "The Nature of Engineering", XXth Congress for the History of Science, 20–26 July 1997, Liege, Belgium.
2. See example: Wiener, N.: Collected works with commentaries, Cambridge/Mass. 1976–1985. Masani, P. P.: Norbert Wiener: 1894–1964, Basel 1990. Heims, S. J.: The Cybernetics Group. Cambridge/Mass. 1991
3. Kramer, S.: Symbolische Maschinen: Die Idee der Formalisierung in geschichtlichem Abri13, Darmstadt 1988.
4. According to statement of the son Michael Schmidt. Max Born, (1882–1970), German physics and Nobel prizewinner (1954). Born worked for the recognition of the theory of relativity, contributed important ideas to the theory of solid materials and explained quantum mechanic together with Werner Heisenberg. In 1921 Born got a professorship for theoretical physics at the University Gottingen. Born lost his position in 1933 because he was Jewish. He went abroad where he worked at Cambridge University (U.K.) and at the Indian Institute of Science Bangalore (India). In 1936 Born got a profes-sorship at the University of Edinburgh. Here he worked until 1953 when he became professor emeritus. In the 1950s and 1960s Born was against nuclear armament and emphasised the social recognition of scientists.