2014, CISM, Udine. Hamilton invented state space models of nonlinear dynamic systems with his generalized momenta work in the 1800s, but, at that time, the lack of computational tools prevented broad acceptance of the first order form of dynamic equations. With the rapid development of computers in the 1960s, State Space models evoked a formal control theory for minimizing a scalar function of control and state, propelled by the calculus of variations and Pontryagins maximal principle.
