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Welcoming Address at the Opening Ceremony of the 7th IFAC World Congress
WELCOMING ADDRESS at the Opening Ceremony of the 7th IFAC W orId Congress Uolevi A. Luoto The President of the Informational Federation of Automatic Control
WELCOMING: It is my very pleasant duty to th~·~ The President of the Republic of Finland, Dr. Urho Kekkonen , for his so friendl y and warm words addressed to this assembled opening session of ours a few moments ago . We have to appreciate it really very much that Dr . Kekkonen was able and was willing to include the IFAC Congress in his schedule . {tJe are greatly honoured, indeed. My second, also very pleasant duty is to
thank our hosts , the Finnish Society of Automatic Control which is the Finnish IFAC National Member Organization , their National Organizing Committee and also the Finnish Executive Team, the supervisory body, for their kind invitation to HAC to hold this Congress here in Helsinki , for their preparations and manifold efforts that have made this event possible now, and for their great hospitality we already have started to enjoy here. I have seen , I understand, and I believe that our hosts are going to do their best to make this Congress an enjoyable event My third duty - first turning around and Changing my hat - now addressing all the
participants of this Congress , flum far and near, is to express my really great joy for having all of you here, and I wish you cordially welcome to my country, Finland, and to my home city , Helsinki. This is the seventh IFAC Congress, before this we have had Congresses in Moscow, Basle , London, Warsaw, Paris and Boston , and we are now adding the name of Helsinki in this string of names of important cities . In the same way as different cities have different characters , and the above cities really have differing characters, every IFAC Congress has been different in character . In our case there has even been a definite attempt to change the nature of the Congress somewhat towards the practical applications of control engineering. It is my personal opinion which mar,y of the organizers share that IFAC Congresses should include in their prograITE a fair share of papers on the practical industrial applications of our technology . Without going into the further
details of this question I leave the idea to the organizers of future IFAC Congresses . I should like to report on the current more important events during my period of Presidency . As we all know, IFAC acti vities have continu-
ously been on the increase through the years. Our statistics indicate that as we in the period 1960- 1963 hac onl y two symposia or similar events, this figure was six for the subsequent period, then grew to 14, and then to 26 . In the period 1975-1978 we had altogether 35 symposia and workshops , ten of them as cosponsors . The t otal number of participants can be estimated to have been 7500, and the total number of papers accepted to these events totals about 1400 . In trying to express HAC activities in businesslike terms, we could estimate that the total turnover, or total amount of registration fees paid , certainly exceeds CHF 2.5 million. We could then work out the number of man-days spent in attending the IFAC events to be 30.000 during the report period. Judgbg on the basis of these figures, we could say that our HAC is by no me~,s a small "undertaking". The IFAC Sister Federations are the International Association for Mathematics and Computers in Simulation , IMACS (formerly AICA), the I nternational Federation for Infonnation Processing, IFIP, the International Federation of Operational Research Societies , I FORS , and the International Measurement Confederation, I MEKO. The traditionally friendly and fruitful cooperation between the Sister Federations has continued in the good smooth way within the framework of the Five International Associations Coordinating Committee, FlACC. In the field of Governrrcr,tal Organizations, I have to mention UNESCO and UNIDO with which IFAC r~s traditionally good contacts. In addition to these, I have been able to
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Welcoming Address
establish a very good contact with the IPLA , with prospects for fruitful cooperation. We have also had some discussions with FAO, and I am sure this cooperation can also be developed . The preparations for the so- called onepublisher scheme had started we:l before the IFAC 1975 Congress in Boston/Cambridge where the first approximate selection of the one publisher was made . Further preparations of the agreement proper took some time , and the actual signing of the agreement with Pergamon Press Limited could be effected in June 1976 only . This signing started the implementation phase of the scheme, and this phase is not really over yet . Therefore, it would be far too early t o form opinions on the success of this scheme . In 1957 the first General Assembly of HAC decided at their meeting in Paris that the IFAC Secretariat should have its seat in DUsseldorf. There the well-kncwn German engineering organization , VDI/VD~-Gesellschaf~ provided the facilities . The Secr~tariat operated in DUsseldorf altogether 19 years , as you may well remembm' . In 1974, however, the VDI/VDE informed IFAC that they no longer were in a position to support the Secretariat. IFAC had to start studying various possibilities to establish a new permanent seat for the Secretariat . Realizing what difficulties I might encounter during my presidency with a newly formed and inexperienced Secretariat in some faraway country, I took the IFAC Secretariat with me to Finland on an interim basis. This interim period provided time for thorough investigation of the secretarial operations and thus als o for planning for a good solution in finding a suitable permanent seat. It is probably needless to say that having had the Secretariat close at hand during the report period has been extremely convenient and efficient. The discussion of the site of the IFAC Secretariat continued over the two first years of the report period, culminating at the Executi \e Council meeting in The Hague in the decision to study t he proposal made by the Austrian NMO closer. Negotiations with the Austrian counterparts which apart from the National Member Organization included the Ministry of Science and Research, the Ministry of Foreign Affairs, and the Austrian Academy of Sciences, conducted in the year 1977, led to a proposal for two separate agreements, one \vi th the Republic of Austria, the other with the Academy of Sciences . These agreements finalized, the formal signing of the same took place in Vienna on April 21, 1978. These agreements define that the Republic of Austria rents IFAC 250 sq.meters of office premises in Laxenburg for a rent of one Austrian shilling per year paying at the same time a yearly amount of 200.000 Austrian shillings for the upkeep of the premises.
The second agreement defines that the Academy of Sciences acts as t~e employer of the secretarial staff remunerating these \vithin the budget of IFAC. This means that the role of the Academy is nominal in a way , while IFAC is the renl employer but cannot act as such within Austria as it is not registered as a legal body there . Not having to go t oo deep into these juridical details, we can simply say that IFAC now has a home in Austria . Before ending my speech I wish to return to Finland and to express my most sincere thanks to the Finnish Ministry of Education for their very kind assistance to the Congress organizers in the form of financing certain stages of the Congress preparations . Further, I wish to express my very best personal thanks to the Academy of Finland for their subsidizing my presidential travels . My special gratitude goes to the Finnish nuclear industry who, understanding the importance of my activities as Pres ident of this Federation, relieved me, upon my request, of my that time duties which would have excessively hindered my travelling and other commitments. And, finally, my best thanks go to my employers, EKONO Oy, who very kindly have let IFAC use their time and facili ties, often below cost . Wi thout all this kind subsidy, assistance, and understanding, the preparations for this event would have been very much more difficult. Finally, I do wish every participant, every listener, every author, every speaker, every chairman and every secretary a very good Congress week. My special wish is : do participate. This is not going to be a Congress of lectures and listeners, this will be a Congress of participants. At the closing session there wi ll be accurate report on your Congress activities, and I think it is going to be good , surely you came to the northermost IFAC capital with the intention to achieve something. I thank you all here and give the floor back to our hosts .
WELCOMING: It is my very pleasant duty to th~·~ The President of the Republic of Finland, Dr. Urho Kekkonen , for his so friendl y and warm words addressed to this assembled opening session of ours a few moments ago . We have to appreciate it really very much that Dr . Kekkonen was able and was willing to include the IFAC Congress in his schedule . {tJe are greatly honoured, indeed. My second, also very pleasant duty is to
thank our hosts , the Finnish Society of Automatic Control which is the Finnish IFAC National Member Organization , their National Organizing Committee and also the Finnish Executive Team, the supervisory body, for their kind invitation to HAC to hold this Congress here in Helsinki , for their preparations and manifold efforts that have made this event possible now, and for their great hospitality we already have started to enjoy here. I have seen , I understand, and I believe that our hosts are going to do their best to make this Congress an enjoyable event My third duty - first turning around and Changing my hat - now addressing all the
participants of this Congress , flum far and near, is to express my really great joy for having all of you here, and I wish you cordially welcome to my country, Finland, and to my home city , Helsinki. This is the seventh IFAC Congress, before this we have had Congresses in Moscow, Basle , London, Warsaw, Paris and Boston , and we are now adding the name of Helsinki in this string of names of important cities . In the same way as different cities have different characters , and the above cities really have differing characters, every IFAC Congress has been different in character . In our case there has even been a definite attempt to change the nature of the Congress somewhat towards the practical applications of control engineering. It is my personal opinion which mar,y of the organizers share that IFAC Congresses should include in their prograITE a fair share of papers on the practical industrial applications of our technology . Without going into the further
details of this question I leave the idea to the organizers of future IFAC Congresses . I should like to report on the current more important events during my period of Presidency . As we all know, IFAC acti vities have continu-
ously been on the increase through the years. Our statistics indicate that as we in the period 1960- 1963 hac onl y two symposia or similar events, this figure was six for the subsequent period, then grew to 14, and then to 26 . In the period 1975-1978 we had altogether 35 symposia and workshops , ten of them as cosponsors . The t otal number of participants can be estimated to have been 7500, and the total number of papers accepted to these events totals about 1400 . In trying to express HAC activities in businesslike terms, we could estimate that the total turnover, or total amount of registration fees paid , certainly exceeds CHF 2.5 million. We could then work out the number of man-days spent in attending the IFAC events to be 30.000 during the report period. Judgbg on the basis of these figures, we could say that our HAC is by no me~,s a small "undertaking". The IFAC Sister Federations are the International Association for Mathematics and Computers in Simulation , IMACS (formerly AICA), the I nternational Federation for Infonnation Processing, IFIP, the International Federation of Operational Research Societies , I FORS , and the International Measurement Confederation, I MEKO. The traditionally friendly and fruitful cooperation between the Sister Federations has continued in the good smooth way within the framework of the Five International Associations Coordinating Committee, FlACC. In the field of Governrrcr,tal Organizations, I have to mention UNESCO and UNIDO with which IFAC r~s traditionally good contacts. In addition to these, I have been able to
xxix
xxx
Welcoming Address
establish a very good contact with the IPLA , with prospects for fruitful cooperation. We have also had some discussions with FAO, and I am sure this cooperation can also be developed . The preparations for the so- called onepublisher scheme had started we:l before the IFAC 1975 Congress in Boston/Cambridge where the first approximate selection of the one publisher was made . Further preparations of the agreement proper took some time , and the actual signing of the agreement with Pergamon Press Limited could be effected in June 1976 only . This signing started the implementation phase of the scheme, and this phase is not really over yet . Therefore, it would be far too early t o form opinions on the success of this scheme . In 1957 the first General Assembly of HAC decided at their meeting in Paris that the IFAC Secretariat should have its seat in DUsseldorf. There the well-kncwn German engineering organization , VDI/VD~-Gesellschaf~ provided the facilities . The Secr~tariat operated in DUsseldorf altogether 19 years , as you may well remembm' . In 1974, however, the VDI/VDE informed IFAC that they no longer were in a position to support the Secretariat. IFAC had to start studying various possibilities to establish a new permanent seat for the Secretariat . Realizing what difficulties I might encounter during my presidency with a newly formed and inexperienced Secretariat in some faraway country, I took the IFAC Secretariat with me to Finland on an interim basis. This interim period provided time for thorough investigation of the secretarial operations and thus als o for planning for a good solution in finding a suitable permanent seat. It is probably needless to say that having had the Secretariat close at hand during the report period has been extremely convenient and efficient. The discussion of the site of the IFAC Secretariat continued over the two first years of the report period, culminating at the Executi \e Council meeting in The Hague in the decision to study t he proposal made by the Austrian NMO closer. Negotiations with the Austrian counterparts which apart from the National Member Organization included the Ministry of Science and Research, the Ministry of Foreign Affairs, and the Austrian Academy of Sciences, conducted in the year 1977, led to a proposal for two separate agreements, one \vi th the Republic of Austria, the other with the Academy of Sciences . These agreements finalized, the formal signing of the same took place in Vienna on April 21, 1978. These agreements define that the Republic of Austria rents IFAC 250 sq.meters of office premises in Laxenburg for a rent of one Austrian shilling per year paying at the same time a yearly amount of 200.000 Austrian shillings for the upkeep of the premises.
The second agreement defines that the Academy of Sciences acts as t~e employer of the secretarial staff remunerating these \vithin the budget of IFAC. This means that the role of the Academy is nominal in a way , while IFAC is the renl employer but cannot act as such within Austria as it is not registered as a legal body there . Not having to go t oo deep into these juridical details, we can simply say that IFAC now has a home in Austria . Before ending my speech I wish to return to Finland and to express my most sincere thanks to the Finnish Ministry of Education for their very kind assistance to the Congress organizers in the form of financing certain stages of the Congress preparations . Further, I wish to express my very best personal thanks to the Academy of Finland for their subsidizing my presidential travels . My special gratitude goes to the Finnish nuclear industry who, understanding the importance of my activities as Pres ident of this Federation, relieved me, upon my request, of my that time duties which would have excessively hindered my travelling and other commitments. And, finally, my best thanks go to my employers, EKONO Oy, who very kindly have let IFAC use their time and facili ties, often below cost . Wi thout all this kind subsidy, assistance, and understanding, the preparations for this event would have been very much more difficult. Finally, I do wish every participant, every listener, every author, every speaker, every chairman and every secretary a very good Congress week. My special wish is : do participate. This is not going to be a Congress of lectures and listeners, this will be a Congress of participants. At the closing session there wi ll be accurate report on your Congress activities, and I think it is going to be good , surely you came to the northermost IFAC capital with the intention to achieve something. I thank you all here and give the floor back to our hosts .