Contributors:

Delmar M. Fadden, Peter M. Morton, Richard W. Taylor, and Thomas Lindberg

Preface:
We, (Delmar Fadden and Peter Morton, Richard W. Taylor and Tom Lindberg) were all working at Boeing when the idea of the 2-person electronic cockpit for commercial transports was first talked about. Individually and collectively we had direct involvement in the early discussions leading up to the project and during various stages of the project’s design, development, and testing. What follows are our recollections of how this important development in aviation history came to be and the road we followed to make the innovation of a 2-person electronic cockpit a reality.

Adventures at Wartime Los Alamos

Contributors: Lawrence Johnston, Professor of Physics, Emeritus, University of Idaho. Submitted on his behalf by the IEEE History Center Staff. Invited by Los Alamos Laboratory, Dr. Johnston gave this presentation on August 9, 2006. 

This article will discuss three major topics. First about how we experienced life in wartime Los Alamos. Second, the work we did on the Fat Man Implosion type of bomb, and third, the three wartime bomb events: the Trinity Test of the Fat Man bomb, and the job that took us to the Tinian Pacific base, and the delivery missions of the bombs to Japan-- Hiroshima and Nagasaki.

Contributed by: Thomas Cuthbert Jr., IEEE Life Member

I joined Collins radio with a B.S.E.E in 1959, after serving as a U.S. Navy pilot and electronics officer and attending M.I.T. and Georgia Tech. During my interview and thereafter, Collins designers talked about loaded Q in circuits, meaning the ratio of L or C reactance to the apparent resistance at a particular frequency; that is how much reactance power (vars) circulates relative to the real power (watts) passing through. In 1959, the main application of loaded Q was calculation of resistance transformations that are equal to 1+QxQ, "one plus Q squared" being the method's name. HF resonators usually are composed of adjacent L and C branches having equal reactances of opposite signs at the passband center frequency.

Arthur Collins' Preference

Arthur Collins always preferred top inductive or magnetic field coupling between resonators because of the greater harmonic attenuation, which increased with loaded Q. Despite only two years of junior college, Arthur Collins was an intuitive genius, who invariably could find a superior qualitative circuit without a quantitative method to justify it.Fortunately, the famous Seymour Cohn published "Direct-Coupled Resonator Filters" in the 1957 IRE Proceedings, and it later dawned on me that resonator loaded Q was simply related to the microwave designer's normalized lowpass (LP) prototype network element values, resonators, and the connecting inverters. The impedance inverters Cohn employed between resonators were just the capacitive or magnetic couplings that always concerned Arthur Collins

Contributed by: Morris Tanebaum, IEEE Life Fellow

For more on the life of Morris Tanebaum see IEEE Oral History with Morris Tanenbaum

Discovery of "transistor effect"

Contributed by: Dean J Chapman, IEEE Life Senior Member

While attending Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute in the late 1950s (BSEE '61), I had the good fortune to be hired as a co-op student by General Electric. This was an excellent program and provided many benefits to the would-be engineer as well as being an excellent recruiting tool for GE. Incidentally, GE's "Advanced Courses in Engineering" or A-B-C Course for young graduates was also an outstanding program that provided mutual benefits to both the employee and employer. I was fortunate to have taken part in that program as well.

First Assignment

Contributed by: Morris Tanenbaum, IEEE Life Fellow

For more on the life of Morris Tanebaum see IEEE Oral History with Morris Tanenbaum

Silicon to Metallurgy

Contributed By: Dean Chapman, IEEE Senior Life Member

For those of us who worked in the area of Radar Systems, it was not uncommon to jump from designing electronic countermeasures (ECM) equipment designed to defeat radars to Electronic Counter-countermeasures (ECCM) equipment intended to defend against such devices. I first worked on ECM and then moved to the ECCM world.

Working on ECM System

Contributed by: William Merton Nellis, IEEE Life Member

In January 1953, I reported for work at Remington-Rand Univac in St. Paul, Minnesota. I had been interviewed for a job at Engineering Research Associates (ERA) several months earlier while still in the Navy but prior to reporting for work the company became Remington-Rand. I worked on a project for the Navy that included recording on large drums as a means of delaying analog signals.

The surface of a drum was coated with a magnetic oxide that could be magnetized with a noncontact boundary displacement recording head. The drum surface was precise and concentric so that the heads could be placed within 1 mil of the surface. The drum was driven at a rather slow constant speed so that the transport time from recording head to pickup head was seconds and adjustable by changing the distance of the pick up on the track. A large drum with approximately ten tracks processed signals from ten hydrophones using this phasing method to turn the hydrophone array into a beamed listening system.

Contributed by: Richard J. Gowen, IEEE Life Fellow

The Primier Global Network for the History of Electrotechnology

It was my privilege to serve as the Chair of the IEEE History Committee in 2007-2008 and guide the development of the IEEE Global History Network. This project involved members of the IEEE History Committee, leaders of several IEEE boards and committees, IEEE staff and contractors. Additionally, I have the honor of serving as the President of the IEEE Foundation with oversight responsibility for the fiscal operations of the IEEE History Committee. The GHN wiki was developed over a seven month period through the extraordinary efforts on the GHN Project Team. I have witnessed the cooperation and dedication that have made the IEEE GHN a reality and use this opportunity to recognize and thank the individuals that had a major part in making this a successful project.

Contributed by: Sajjad (Saj) Durrani, IEEE Life Fellow

For more on the life of Sajjad Durrani see IEEE Oral History with Sajjad Durrani.

I worked on space-related projects for most of my career, but would like to start with some background. Accordingly, this write-up consists of four parts: a brief career history; general remarks about space projects; early education and formative years; and studies leading to the first engineering degree. Subsequent postings will discuss some satellite communications projects that may be of broad interest.

Contributor by: G. Fonda-Bonardi, IEEE Life Senior Member

In 1949, I was working as a microwave engineer at Hughes Aircraft Company (HAC) in Culver City, California. I was responsible for the design, test, and integration of the RF subsystem for the APG37 airborne fire control radar, which was intended for use in the new generation of jet interceptors and fighter airplanes, beginning with the F86.

The microwave subsystem was comprised of the duplexer, balanced mixer, rotary joints, and antenna. The antenna was to be a parabolic dish with painfully severe specifications on size, weight, gain, side lobe level, and tracking accuracy, which was obtained by conical scanning (monopulse was still in the future). Other groups at HAC were designing and testing the modulator, IF amplifier, display, servo system, and fire control computer.

Adventures on the USS Intrepid: Personal Recollections

        When I graduated from college in the mid-1960s, military service was expected of all male U.S. citizens who did not have an exemption from military service. I chose the U.S. Navy, joining a commissioning program that I completed during summer breaks while I was pursuing my BSEE degree. Following graduation I was commissioned as an Ensign and received orders to report to the USS Intrepid.
        The Intrepid, I learned, was on of several super-carriers which served in WWII during 1943-45. She had a distinguished war record having participated in several battles in the South Pacific. Following the war Intrepid, along with a number of her sister ‘flattops’, was decommissioned. In the mid-1950s she was modernized to receive an angled deck along with major improvements.

        Intrepid rejoined the U.S. fleet following her modernization and was transferred to the east cost as a fleet aircraft carrier. She served with the fleet through the late 1960s to 1965 carrying out a number of miscellaneous duties such as midshipman cruises and pilot training. One of Intrepid’s notable feats was recovery of the Gemini III space capsule and her crew. I had the good fortune of learning that I would be assigned to the Intrepid on the day before the Gemini recovery. Needless to say, I intently listened to recovery activities knowing that I would soon be a crewmember of the Intrepid.

Contributed By: Stanley Baron, IEEE Life Fellow

Inventing the Vidifont:

In 1966, Rudi Bass, Director of Graphics Arts for CBS News, was tackling a set of challenges in preparation for the 1968 elections. Among other tasks, the Graphics Arts Department was required to generate graphics, including title graphics, for the Republican and Democratic National Conventions. In order to comprehend the magnitude of the task they faced, it is helpful to understand how television graphics were created in those times.

Contributed By: Dean Chapman, IEEE Senior Life Member

The Independent Power System Operator or Regional Transmission Operator is a fairly new concept in the Electric Utility Industry. New York State was one of the early and more successful systems to transition to this new business model. I was fortunate enough to have participated in the transition into this new mode of electric system operation.

After spending the first half of my career in defense work, primarily Radar ECM and ECCM, I became interested in the use of computers for real time data acquisition and control. In 1977, I went to work for Niagara Mohawk Power Corporation in their Power Control Center. At the time, their Supervisory Control and Data Acquisition (SCADA) System was comprised of an IBM 1800 computer and a mini-computer-based data acquisition system, both featuring ferrite core memory. Later on, the system was greatly expanded and featured a large IBM Mainframe as its processor.

Hugo K. Messerle

(1925~2004)
Emeritus Professor Hugo K Messerle BEE, MEngSc, DSc (Melbourne) PhD (Sydney) joined The Sydney University in 1952, and became Head of the School of Electrical Engineering in 1972. He retired in 1991 as USYD Head of the School of Electrical Engineering and Director of the School's Electrical Engineering Foundation, which he founded.