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…On Becoming a Professional (February - March 2002)

For almost 75 years, some engineering societies have supported the idea that they could raise the level of professionalism among engineers by requiring them to pass a test and then allowing them to call themselves Professional Engineers.

From time to time, various initiatives have been undertaken to require more engineers to be registered PEs before they would qualify for this or that. In every case, the proposals have been met by a loud outcry from the practicing engineering community. In fact, more than 90 percent of the world's engineers have chosen not to bother with becoming registered PEs. As a result, by the very definition offered by the profession, most of the engineers in the world are non-professional — a most most counter-productive initiative.

I believe a better alternative is the path chosen by the accountants. An accountant is simply an accountant. However, those who pass a stringent examination and meet certain other criteria may call themselves Certified Public Accountants (CPAs). The CPA title is well understood and is respected widely.

Wouldn't this be equally appropriate for engineers? Couldn't we use the title "Certified Public Engineer" (CPE) to designate those who had distinguished themselves by passing a rigorous test and were therefore specially qualified to deal with the public's safety? Doesn't this meet the intent of the PE? An engineer would be an engineer and a Certified Public Engineer would be a CPE, and the subject of professionalism could return to the closet.

The major advantages of this approach are simplicity and clarity. The title CPE automatically denotes that the engineer deals with matters affecting public safety. We could finally avoid the hair-splitting distinctions that which are currently necessary as we attempt to explain ourselves to the public.

On the surface there are no major drawbacks to using the CPE instead of the PE. I believe the CPE designation would be more meaningful and would be easily accepted by both the engineering and non-engineering community. What do you think? Does it matter?

— Robert C. Curry
IEEE Life Member

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…On Walter Brattain (February - March 2002)

I was interested in the piece about Walter Brattain in the February issue. In that article, it was noted that the June 30, 1948 announcement of the invention of the transistor attracted little interest.

This reminded me of when Nikola Tesla introduced the concept of a rotating magnetic field in the air gap of an alternating current machine at an AIEE meeting in 1888.

At the time of Tesla's presentation, the Journal of AIEE included the discussion of papers, along with the papers themselves. It was interesting that there was much discussion of several other papers, but only perfunctory discussion of Tesla's paper. It appears that little notice was taken at the meeting of Tesla's concept, which served as the foundation of the theory of operation of induction and synchronous motors. At that time, direct current motors had been in use successfully for many years. There had been considerable effort to operate motors on alternating current with rather poor results. Tesla presented the solution and within a very few years induction motors were very common and widely used.

It appears that the very great value of this contribution to knowledge by Tesla was not appreciated until some time after the meeting; similar in many ways to the announcement of the Brattain's transistor.

— David W. Knudsen,
IEEE Life Senior Member
Gray, Maine

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…On Blame, Not Respect (October - November 2001)

This is a systemic problem ingrained in the American economy. Imagine for a moment that engineers were on par with doctors: limited school enrollment, specialization, each individual (or small groups) incorporated, and payment made per contact, etc. If this were reality, American businesses could not survive in today's world. Sure, a small segment of the engineering workforce does operate this way, but the vast majority of engineers provide the factory with tools and processes that spur progress, while they are compensated as just another set of laborers. In what other environment can you receive only $500 or so for a patent that can substantially contribute to a company's bottom line?

— Charles Pasquariello

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