Bill Powers grew up in a suburb of Chicago, Illinois and served in the United States Navy in World War II, after which he earned his Physics degree from Northwestern University on the GI Bill.

His interest in control theory as a model of behavior began while he was a medical physicist at the Veterans Administration Research Hospital in Chicago, where he designed many devices for medical research; notably, a curve-tracer for plotting isodose contours in the beam of radiation from a Cobalt-60 therapy machine.

While attending the Graduate School of Psychology at Northwestern in 1960, he worked part-time as a technician in the Department of Astronomy where later he became chief systems engineer. In that capacity, Powers designed and built low-light-level television systems for astronomy. He was involved in the design of the Lindheimer Astronomical Research Center, and was responsible for the design and building of the Corralitos Observatory. He created the automatic all-sky photometer for use on the moon (for Apollo 18, which never flew).

During this period, Powers conducted several one-quarter seminars on control theory at NU, sponsored by Don Campbell and Hugh Petrie.
Throughout these early years, he was publishing regularly on the subject of control theory His book, Behavior: The Control of Perception was the culmination of 20 years study when it was first published in 1973 (2nd edition, revised and expanded, Benchmark Publications 2005).

In 1984, Powers and his colleagues founded the Control Systems Group (CSG); members participate in research, discussion, and practical application of control theory, now called perceptual control theory (PCT). They communicate on line regularly, and hold an annual International Conference

Powers retired in 1990 from the Chicago Sun Times, where he spent over a decade as a technician in the technical services group. Among many special projects, he developed a system for receiving newsprint manifests by wire, and won the Marshall Field Award for his microcomputer system for receiving, formatting, and typesetting satellite-broadcast stock tables in real time.

Throughout his varied career, and ever since, he has continued his work on developing a control-system model of behavioral organization. In retirement, Powers spends his time writing, giving seminars and papers at scientific meetings, conducting research and working with colleagues on collaborative projects, such as building testable models of the theory. When asked to describe himself, Bill said:

I have always been pretty much a blue-collar type, by training and by preference.