Experimental Physics and
Industrial Control System

>Was anyone around before EPICS was created?

Yes – I worked on HELIOS 1 for Oxford Instruments PLC in the UK. This  used a control system from SLAC interfacing to CAMAC. For HELIOS2 we changed to Vsystem which was a commercial package that also interfaced to CAMAC.
>What was life as a control system engineer?  

This was before Google so life was different in so many ways. In particular you had to read the docs carefully and create alot more stuff yourself
>Were labs all creating their respective control system?
>What was the impact of EPICS on this development process?

EPICS is well supported by a responsive and sharing community.
>What are other control systems used (particularly in the US)?  

TANGO( European)
>Why do you think they didn't switch to EPICS?
Should EPICS be the sole and uncontested software/framework for accelerators? why or why not?

>You should direct such a question to the Tango community
>What about high-level software?  CSS, medm, edm, matlab, Qt... (labview, other?)Which one do you use, why and which one would you like to use?
At Diamond we use GDA on nearly all beamlines. www.opengda.org.  Users are generally happy with its functionality and performance. GDA supports both EPICS and TANGO devices. For synoptic GDA using the SDS from the CSS project.
>Should we all converge to CSS, another? Why or why not?

IMHO CSS is biased towards operators rather than experimental definition and execution.