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01.12
2012 — A "Milestone" Year
By Michael N.
Geselowitz, Ph.D., Staff Director, IEEE History Center
Happy New Year.
As a historian, of course, I do
not need an anniversary to focus my interest on
the past. However, “round” anniversaries are a
useful hook for the public historian to grab the
attention of a broader audience. Regular
readers of this column will have noticed that
the IEEE History Center often resorts to this
method. That being said, 2012 looks like a
banner year for anniversaries. Some we may have
an opportunity to feature in this section over
the course of the next 12 months, but others we
may not, so let me start off the year with an
overview.
First of all, in terms of
institutional history, 2012 marks the centennial
of the Institute of Radio Engineers (IRE), one
of the two predecessor organizations of IEEE
(the other being the American Institute of
Electrical Engineers, AIEE, founded in 1884).
Furthermore, 2012 is the 50th year of
the existence of IEEE in its current form — the
preparations for the merger took place during
1962, and the AIEE and IRE officially joined to
form IEEE on 1 January 1963. One upshot of the
merger was that the new organization took on the
global focus of IRE, leaving American engineers
without a national society. Therefore, in 1973,
IEEE formed the United States Activities
Committee — the organizational unit that
eventually evolved in IEEE-USA. Look for
activities during this year (and perhaps
additional mentions in this column) leading up
to the 50th anniversary of IEEE and
the 40th anniversary of IEEE-USA in
2013!
However,
we have covered the history of these
organizations in Today’s Engineer before, so
I will not go into detail here — let me just point
out one more fact. Legally, the merger was a
takeover of IRE by AIEE with a minor name
change. In practice, the IRE was the larger
organization and many of its structures carried
over. Most importantly, Proceedings of the
IRE was carried over as the main technical
journal with the name Proceedings of the IEEE
(AIEE’s Electrical Engineering
magazine was put aside, although a new general
magazine, IEEE Spectrum was then
launched). Therefore 2012 represents the
centennial and 100th volume of
Proceedings, and
IEEE is recognizing this accordingly.
In terms of contributors to our
fields, 2012 marks the centennial of the births
of Alan Turing (23 June) and David Packard (7
September). One of the ways that the IEEE
History Center preserves the legacy of such
giants is through our oral history program.
Unfortunately, among our more than 500 interviews we
do not have ones with Turing or Packard, but we
do have an
interview with Packard’s close partner William
Hewlett, which discusses their work
together.
And as for that work of pioneers
such as Turing and Packard, regular readers of
this column should be familiar with the IEEE
Milestones Program. Several of the events that
have been recognized as IEEE Milestones have
major anniversaries in 2012:
Thomas Edison’s West Orange Laboratories and
Factories (125th anniversary);
the Westinghouse Atom Smasher (75th
anniversary); the Stanford Linear Accelerator
Center (50th anniversary); the
Mercury Spacecraft (50th
anniversary);
the Alouette-ISIS Satellite (50th
anniversary); the beginning of the Swiss
Pioneering Work on the Quartz Electronic
Wristwatch (50th anniversary);
the beginning of the design of the
Grumman Lunar Module (50th
anniversary); and the Telstar satellite (50th
anniversary; recognized by Milestone dedications
at the three ground stations in
Maine, the
UK, and
France).
Finally, I would like to point
out that there is an age rule for the IEEE
Milestones program — the events recognized must be
at least 25 years old, so that the program is
one of historical recognition rather than a
prize for current work. That means that
technological events that occurred in 1987
become eligible in 2012. These include the
invention of the Digital Light Processor chip,
the release of the VGA standard, the
introduction of the GIF format, the discovery of
Erbium-doped fiber amplifiers, the launching of
MOS-1 (the first Japanese earth observation
satellite), and the launch of the first version
of the important software package Photoshop. In
addition, although there are 116 dedicated
Milestones (with at least a dozen dedications
anticipated this year), given the breadth of the
program there are still many, many opportunities
to propose an event prior to 1987 in addition to
events in 1987. I urge you and your Section or
other IEEE organizational unit to explore
proposing an IEEE Milestone today.
That would be a great way to
celebrate 2012!
Michael N.
Geselowitz, Ph.D., is staff director at the IEEE
History Center at Rutgers University in New
Brunswick, N.J. Visit the IEEE History Center's
Web page at:
www.ieee.org/organizations/history_center.
Visit the IEEE History
Center's Web page at:
www.ieee.org/organizations/history_center.
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