Program Highlights

The IEEE History Center magnifies its impact by assisting researchers, scholars, policy makers, IEEE members and the public in securing fact-based information and evidence to support their messaging. Among the authors and film directors who have reached wider audiences thanks to the IEEE History Center’s involvement in 2017, author Dan Albert quoted from IEEE History Center oral histories for his book on television pioneer Vladimir Zworykin and documentary filmmakers in Japan and the US sought content that was ultimately included in “Mind over Matter: the Andrija Puharich Story.” History Center staff also assisted the National Inventors’ Hall of Fame, IEEE Regions, Sections and Societies and prepared material for the Congressional Inventors Caucus’ project celebrating women inventors and those in STEM fields who served in the United States Congress.

Fostering a Technologically Literate World

IEEE History Center Programs aspire to create a technologically literate world and their recent activities and accomplishments help demonstrate how they achieve this goal.

The Engineering & Technology History Wiki (ETHW) received grants from the IEEE New Initiatives Committee (NIC) and Google Corporation. Specifically, the NIC grant permitted the ETHW to expand and improve its historical timeline, while the Google grant provides free advertising, which helped the ETHW amass more than 1.12 million unique users.

A book published by the IEEE History Center played a major role in landmarking the Excelsior Steam Power Building (1882) in Manhattan, with New York Power by Joseph Cunningham serving as the scholarly work most cited. History Center staff wrote articles on how inventors and technologists got their first big break. These short, accessible profiles featured in The Institute foster entrepreneurship and exploration, especially in younger engineers and focused largely on female technologists.

The History Center assisted IEEE Awards in building the Medal of Honor Wall of Fame at the IEEE Operations Center in Piscataway, NJ, US. By supplying photographs, historical information and artifacts related to IEEE Medal of Honor winners, the History Center helped preserve, recognize and promote notable IEEE achievements.

2017 was also a highly-visible year for IEEE Milestones. Fourteen plaques were dedicated in the United Kingdom, Japan, Sweden, Ukraine, Norway, Germany and the United States. The Milestones dedicated in 2017 recognized technical achievements in television, radio, radar, power transmission, distributed computing, radio astronomy, atomic timekeeping, cellular telephony, liquid crystals and superconducting magnets.