Scanning the Proceedings for History

By some measures, the May 1912 merger of the Society of Wireless Telegraph Engineers and the Wireless Institute to form the Institute of Radio Engineers (IRE) does not seem to have been an auspicious event. The two merging societies had themselves been formed only a few years earlier, driven by the desire of communications (wireless) engineers to have a professional home of their own, a home distinct from the American Institute of Electrical Engineers (AIEE), which was increasingly focused on electric power. But two societies for wireless engineers were apparently not needed, and perhaps not yet even one. The initial membership of the IRE was reported to be Bfewer than fifty.[ Robert H. Marriott, the founding President of the Wireless Institute became the founding President of the IRE. Evidently, he and the other IRE founding fathers recognized that a publication would be central to the success of the new organization, and in January 1913, they launched the PROCEEDINGS OF THE INSTITUTE OF RADIO ENGINEERS, the journal that 50 years later would become the PROCEEDINGS OF THE IEEE. Alfred N. Goldsmith was appointed the first Editor. As a graduate student at Columbia University, Goldsmith had been responsible for the publications of the Wireless Institute. The cover of the first issue indicates that he had, by 1913, received a Ph.D. Much has been written about the history of the PROCEEDINGS OF THE IRE/IEEE and of the history of technology it records; anything more is almost certain to be redundant. But the magic of IEEE Xplore now makes it practical for all of us to be casual historians, to easily read through a century of original publications in our field, to see for ourselves how world changing innovations began in the context of their time. What follows are some notes and observations from my own scan through the archive. I urge you to try it for yourself. I think you will be as fascinated as I have been. For a society of so few members, the first issue was impressive. In the first paper, Michael I. Pupin described theoretical work aimed at understanding the radiation properties of antennas. Pupin, a BProfessor of Electro-Mechanics[ at Columbia University (note the implied interdisciplinary nature of the position), was then famous as the inventor of loading coils, inductors, that when properly spaced along telephone lines allowed much longer transmission. The second paper, by Stanley M. Hills, is a description of the properties of high-voltage (high-tension) insulators for communications. It is a very practical paper, seemingly aimed at what we might today call the Bpracticing engineer.[ The paper does not carry Hills’ affiliation and I have learned little about his career. But 84 years later (Proc. IEEE, vol. 85, pp. 311–113, 1997), J. Keith Nelson, a current member of the IEEE Board of Directors and an expert in the field, lauded it as Bvisionary.[ The third and final paper was by Lee de Forest, inventor of what he called the audion, later known as the triode vacuum tube, an amplifier that enabled wireless audio transmission. De Forest gives his affiliation as BEngineer of the Federal Telegraph Company,[ and writes about the technologies used by that company. Each of these papers was followed by comments from the editor and others, in a manner familiar to readers of today’s blogs. Pupin (1917), Goldsmith (1928), and de Forest (1930) were all future Presidents of the IRE. In Volume 1, Issue 2, which was published about a year after the loss of the Titanic, Robert Marriott wrote about BRadio operation by steamship companies.[ In it, he argued that shipboard wireless equipment and the training of their operators were both well behind the state of the art of the time, and he called for improvements in both. It is a strong early example of engineers engaging in discussions of public policy related to technology. A total of 15 papers were published that first year, in quarterly issues priced at $1 each. Today, as we debate the future of technical publishing, of copyright, and of open access, it is interesting to read the original republication policy of the IRE: