Biography: W. Ross Ashby (1903-1972)

Shortly after Ross died, his wife Rosebud discovered a small 60 page notebook. It contains autobiographical information that Ross wrote between 1951 and 1955. On the first page, Ross quoted from Hamlet Act 1, Scene II:

This biography was written by Ross's daughter, Jill, based on that notebook, her genealogical research, and her memories.

William Ross Ashby was always known as Ross. He was born on 6th September 1903 in a rented upstairs flat at 28a, Chalsey Road, Brockley, Lewisham, London. His father, William Ross Chamberlin Ashby, known as Will, was 23 and an Assistant Manager of an Advertising Agency at the time. From the earliest Ross could remember his father was extremely ambitious for him to become a famous barrister or a famous surgeon though he had no ancestors who were. By the time that Ross’s sister, Dorothy, was born seventeen months later, Will was a Commercial Traveler with DeWitts Pharmaceutical Company and later a very successful Manager of their Overseas Sales.

Ross was born the day before his mother, Florence Agnes’s 27th birthday. Her father, grandfather and great grandfather were all named Henry Lemmon and were Master Watch Makers in London. Will’s father was a Hosier Buyer until about the time his wife and her five older siblings each inherited about £2300 in 1889 from their father William Ross. William Ross was a Ball Maker at least until he was 40 and then a General Dealer and later an Iron Merchant. A Ball Maker was a person who dipped a hollow rod into molten glass to mould and pass to a glass blower. He was probably illiterate because when he married in 1840 he did not sign his name, but in 1867 he patented a composition that would “prevent the encrustation of boilers”. His son, Arthur, became a supplier to Her Majesty’s Government and used the Royal cipher on documents. Ross and Dorothy were William and Florence’s only children.

For more information about Ross's ancestors, see his family tree.

Ross began his education at Stillness Road School, Brockley, Lewisham, London, then from the age of 7-11 he was educated at a very small private school called St. Margaret's, four doors away from the small rented terraced house where the family lived in Hildaville Drive, Westcliffe-on-Sea - 30 miles east of London. In Ross’s notebook he described education there as ‘trifling’ and he spent much time with the couple’s youngest son who was three years his senior, “We drifted and fooled about and chatted idly.”

Ross failed the entrance exam to the City of London School and was sent to a local school, Worcester College, under Ulysses Walker where education “was much more business like”.

In September 1917 Ross, with his mother and sister moved 400 miles north to a flat in Edinburgh in Scotland to start 4 years as a day boy at Edinburgh Academy. During this time, his father was living in Croydon, Surrey.

Ross spent 1921-'24 at Sidney Sussex College in Cambridge, England. He lived in lodgings, became interested in puzzles, continued his interest in astronomy, which he started as a boy, and gained a B.A. in Zoology. He went on to study Medicine at St Bartholomew’s Hospital in London. While at Medical School he was also teaching himself advanced mathematics, and in May 1928 he started a Journal that he continued for the rest of his life. Ross makes it clear in the autobiographical notebook that what he recorded in his journal had no relation to his daily work. His journal was his retreat away from the realities of life where he would daydream about the brain and where he could "... weave delightful patterns of pure thought untroubled by social, financial and other distractions.".

In November 1926, Ross’s sister Dorothy introduced him to her friend and workmate Elsie Maud Thorne who was then known as “Prickles”. They worked together in the Millinery Department of Liberty’s in Regent Street, London. Ross did not like her nickname and started calling her Rosebud but few outside the family were ever allowed to use it. She was always either ‘Mrs Ashby’ or ‘Ash’.

Ross was employed as a Psychiatrist at the Leavesdon Mental Hospital in Hertfordshire from 1930-'36.

Ross and Rosebud had a very quiet wedding in June 1931 in Hornsey London attended only by their parents and they moved into a detached fully-furnished three bed-roomed house Merrow Down, Kings Langley in Hertfordshire, a wedding present from Ross's father. Their first daughter, Jill, was born at home in October 1932. Sally followed in June 1934 and Ruth in December 1935.

In March 1945, aged 41, Ross was drafted for Emergency Military Service as a Pathologist in the Royal Army Medical Corps and soon rose to the rank of Major. He went to India in May 1945 on board S.S. Bermuda, was opposite Algiers on VE day and spent almost a year in Poona and Jalallahi, Bangalore. He quite enjoyed it but was invalided back to England but not out of the Army. It is not know why. In his notebooks Ross mentions having problems with an enlarged heart.

Ross was not religious. On his Army application form in March 1945, against “religion”, he wrote in large capital letters “AGNOSTIC”. In June 1945 in Poona, on page 1956 of his journal, he wrote: "Having decided (Heaven forgive me, but it is my conviction) to follow in Darwin’s footsteps. I bought his autobiography to get some hints on how to do it."

In November 1946, on page 2072, Ross recorded his first design for an "Isomorphism making machine". In late 1947, Denis Bannister became Ross’s Laboratory Assistant for just over a year until he was called up for National Service and much later became Ross’s son-in-law. Their main work was researching enzymes but in spare time over about three months and as a definite sideline, they built the Homeostat using four ex-RAF bomb control units, valves, and liquid-filled, magnetically-driven potentiometers.

On page 2094, Ross described the design of the units:

Its principle is that it uses multiple coils in a milliammeter & uses the needle movement to dip in a trough carrying a current, so getting a potential which goes to the grid of a valve, the anode of which provides an output current.

In the same month, Alan Turing wrote a letter to Ross advising him to implement a simulation on the ACE computer instead of building a special machine.

On 13 March 1948, on page 2433, Ross recorded his gratitude to Denis and to Graham White who came over from The Burden Institute to help. Many years later, Denis confirmed that only one Homeostat was built and that it was definitely constructed at Barnwood House Hospital. A story that it was built on Mrs Ashby’s kitchen table must have been a joke, because the kitchen in Windon House was very small, with no space for even a small table. Even if there had been enough space, Rosebud would never have allowed such a thing in her kitchen.

Three days later, Ross wrote on page 2435:

Triumph! The machine of p 2432 the "automatic homeostat" was completed today after some wrong wirings, a burn-out due to shorting, delay for fitting fuses everywhere & finally an actual working this evening.
After all the trouble, it works.

The Homeostat received much publicity. It was more prominently featured on the front page of The Herald than the announcement that four-week old Prince Charles had been named and was to be christened. In January 1949, in an article titled "The Thinking Machine", Time magazine described the Homeostat as "the closest thing to a synthetic brain so far designed by man". For more information, see The Electronic Brain.

Denis recollects that the Homeostat was very heavy and that he helped Ross take it to various meetings. Ross demonstrated it at the Ratio Club and the 9th Macy Conference. In 1961, Ross took it with him to the Biological Computing Laboratory, University of Illinois and left it there when he retired in 1970. Apparently, it was damaged soon after that when the area where it was being kept was flooded.

Thumbnails of all journal pages that Ross indexed under the keyword 'Homeostat' can be viewed on the Homeostat thumbs view page. In addition, the following journal pages (which were not indexed under 'Homeostat') contain newspaper clippings that relate to the Homeostat and a BBC radio broadcast about "The Mechanical Brain".

Ross was originally employed as a Research Biochemist, investigating the enzymes involved in electro-convulsive therapy (E.C.T.)., Barnwood House was the first hospital in Britain to introduce E.C.T. in 1939 and Leucotomy in 1941. Ross usually spent every Thursday with Professor Golla and Dr Grey Walter either at The Burden Institute in Bristol 30 miles away or at Barnwood House.

As a result of the National Health Service offering free treatment and improvements in the treatment of mental illnesses, Barnwood House faced falling numbers of patients and it became increasingly unlikely that it would survive. Barnwood House eventually closed in 1968.

Ross was a founding member of the Cambridge-based interdisciplinary group of young researchers, known as The Ratio Club. On journal page 2624 he described the inaugural meeting that took place on 14 September 1949 at the National Hospital for Nervous Diseases.

Alan Turing, who had written a letter to Ross in 1946 about Ross's intention to build the Homeostat, was also a member of the club. At the 7 December 1950 meeting, Turing gave a talk titled "Educating a Digital Computer" in which he presented what became know as the Turing Test.

For more information, see The Ratio Club: A Hub of British Cybernetics by Phil Husbands and Owen Holland.

Back in April 1943 on Journal page 1234 Ross had outlined his intention to write a book about his research. Some people thought that Ross found writing easy but he said quite the contrary. In April 1947 (Journal page 2174) he mentioned the need to improve his style of writing.

In March 1949, Ross started a correspondence course with The Regent Institute in Palace Gate, West London and almost two years later gained a Diploma in Effective English and Personal Efficiency. On 12 June 1949 he wrote in his journal "Have been doing nothing but write my book since I returned from holiday (April 11)."

The Superintendent at Barnwood House, Dr Flemming, was very supportive of Ross when he started writing Design For a Brain. Ross completed it in December 1950, it was published in 1952, and gradually his hobby (his journal) became his work.

Ross kept newspaper cuttings in his Journal for the first advertisment in Nature and recorded the following reviews: Observer, Citizen, British Medical Journal, Journal of Consulting Psychology & McCulloch, Hibbert Journal, Galaxy and Scientific American, and Occupational Psychology.

On Christmas Eve 1952, Ross recorded on page 4298: "Following a suggestion from Dad I have decided to write an Introducton to Cybernetics." With his second book, he wanted to make Cybernetics more accessible for non-cyberneticians, such as physiologists, psychologists, and sociologists. In the preface, he wrote:

Though the book covers many topics, these are but means; the end has been throughout to make clear what principles must be followed when one attempts to restore normal function to a sick organism that is, as a human patient, of fearful complexity. It is my faith that the new understanding may lead to new and effective treatments, for the need is great.

Ross kept newspaper cuttings in his Journal for the first advertisment and the following reviews: Nature by D.M. MacKay, Electronic Engineering, Electronic & Radio Engineer, and Automation Progress by Grey Walter.

In 1999, it was made available as a PDF by Principia Cybernetica Project.

In 1954 Ross was invited to join 49 other fellows for a year at the Center of Behavioral Sciences at Stanford University, Palo Alto, California, the first of such gatherings, but he had to decline the offer due to other commitments.

In 1955 Ross was invited again, and the whole family plus their two-seater Triumph TR2 car and the Homeostat left for Palo Alto. On the way, they stayed five days with Rook and Warren McCulloch in Old Lyme, Connecticut, where Walter Pitts was also a guest.

On their return journey home a year later, Ross and Rosebud met their daughters again for several days at the McCullochs'. The girls had been traveling six weeks by Greyhound from Palo Alto via the Canadian Rockies, Yellowstone Park, and Great Aunt Clara in Toledo. Ross had a big surprise, he had grown a beard and the girls all got the giggles.

In 1959 Ross and Rosebud bought a quaint 100 year old disused village school 10 miles north of Bristol and called it “Westons”, after the village teacher, Miss Mary Weston, who had the school built with public subscription in 1857.

The conversion to what they hoped would be their dream retirement home, took a year, so Ross and Rosebud lived in an 18-foot caravan in the school grounds. While Ross was at work, Rosebud was busy clearing the playground and discovered rock under a few inches of soil. This fired her imagination and she created a huge natural rockery, built walls with spare stone, excavated an enormous sunken garden and, with Ross’ help, built a long six foot high curved retaining wall with seats in it. Even in winter it was a superb suntrap. The rock floor of the sunken garden was not level so Ross made a low three-legged triangular table which was very useful when refreshments and meals were enjoyed down there.

The day the furniture was being moved out of storage into Westons, Ross phoned Rosebud from Urbana, Illinois, full of excitement. Heinz von Foerster, with Stafford Beer present, had offered him a chair at the University in the Department of Electrical Engineering. He realized it was quite the wrong time to suggest leaving Westons and nobody knows what Rosebud's initial reaction was.

Just before Christmas 1960, Ross and Rosebud boarded the S.S Maasdam in Southampton for New York with their Jaguar car and the Homeostat for what was originally going to be just one year. During the voyage, Ross entered the fancy hat competition with a "Thinking Cap" made out of wire coat hangers with a rotating vane and pieces of paper with various mathematical symbols on them. Ross won the first prize. They managed to come home annually for a holiday usually to coincide with a conference somewhere in Europe or England. Each year, they decided to stay for another year in the U.S., until Ross retired in 1970.

In 1961 Ross gave the Frier Distinguished Lecture.

Ross was in his element at BCL. It provided him with so much interaction and collaboration, both with faculty and students that Ross said his nine years at the BCL were very exhausting but his most productive and enjoyable.

In 1964, Ross and Rosebud were invited to Russia to be able to spend all the Roubles from the Russian edition of “Design for a Brain” that had accumulated, but could not be converted to a hard currency, and had to be spent in Russia. Although he knew he would be given the very best hospitality, he decided not to take Rosebud because of the political situation. While there he wanted to buy Rosebud a fur coat so he tried on some of her coats before he left, shutting his eyes to get the feel of them, he being the smaller. The Russian store staff could not understand his actions. He bought back a beautiful black astrakhan coat but, sadly, Rosebud never wore it because it was made for Russian winters. Besides Russian trinkets for the family, he bought a very large lens for himself and later constructed a large frame from Dexion, wood and Meccano to hold the lens for use as a telescope.

In August 1968, both London Evening papers told of “The Brain Drain in Reverse” as Professor Frank George, who for the past year had been at Georgia Institute of Technology, and Professor Ross Ashby were intending to start a Cybernetic Institute at Brunel University, Uxbridge in London to rival the research center in Moscow. But they could not find funding for the project. By then Ross was 65, found lecturing very exhausting and even mentioned in correspondence thinking of coming home five years earlier. Also, it would have meant not returning to Westons, into which they had both invested so much hard work. Compared to the peace and tranquility of Westons and the beauty of the surrounding countryside, living under the flight path of Heathrow would have been a very unwelcome ordeal.