The W. Ross Ashby Digital Archive

William Ross Ashby (1903-1972) was a British pioneer in the fields of cybernetics and systems theory. He is best known for the Law of Requisite Variety, building the automatically stabilizing Homeostat device, and his books An Introduction to Cybernetics and Design for a Brain.

In 2003, Ross's daughters gave his archive materials to The British Library, London. Then, in March 2004, on the last day of the W. Ross Ashby Centenary Conference, they announced that they would make his journal available on the Internet. This website fulfils that promise, making this previously unpublished work available on-line.

The Journal consists of about 7,189 pages in 25 volumes, and over 1,600 index cards. To make it easy to browse purposefully through so many images, extensive cross-linking has been added, based on the keywords in Ross's original keyword index and subject index. To jump directly to a particular Journal page, type the page number here: then press Enter.

The Biography describes Ross's life in more detail than has previously been available in the public domain, and includes many photographs from the family's private albums. Various other information and resources can be accessed via the navigation frame on the left.

In April 2016, The British Library featured Ross on two blogs:

• "Pioneering cybernetics: an introduction to W Ross Ashby"
• "The Thinking Machine: W Ross Ashby and the Homeostat".