Hendrik Wade Bode, while working at Bell Labs in the 1930s, devised a simple but accurate method for graphing gain and phase-shift plots. These bear his name, Bode gain plot and Bode phase plot. "Bode" is often pronounced in English as , whereas in Dutch it is usually , closer to English , which is preferred by his family, but less common among researchers.

Bode was faced with the problem of designing stable