Scanning the Past: A History of Electrical Engineering from the Past

Submitted by Dick Reiman, Historian

Copyright 1992 IEEE. Reprinted with permission from the IEEE publication, "Scanning the Past" which covers a reprint of an article appearing in the Proceedings of the IEEE Vol. 80, No. 1 January 1992. 

The PROCEEDINGS Nears Eighty

 The year 1913 was a propitious one for the founding of a publication intending to concern itself with dissemination of information on wireless telegraphy or radio. This was as yet a frail branch of electrical engineering, supported only by incomplete understanding of its basic theory, and plagued by patent litigation spanning several continents. Even the inventor of the field's most promising device, the vacuum triode, did not well understand its functioning. Thus the need for furthering the spread of knowledge in the field could not have been greater .

To be known as the PROCEEDINGS OF THE INSTITUTE OF RADIO ENGINEERS, the publication arrived on the world scene as the result of a merger of two struggling societies - the Society of Wireless Engineers of Boston, and the Wireless Institute of New York. The merger was the culmination of efforts by three men, Robert H. Marriott, John V. L. Hogan, and Alfred Goldsmith. If Marriott and Hogan were nurses at the birth, Goldsmith was certainly the attending physician; the event bears marks of the latter's innovative leadership. One was the understanding that radio was not limited by national boundaries - that the word American was not appropriate for the title (a principle which carried over to the later merger which led to the IEEE). The second was that publications would be the major means of building the profession, and the position of Editor should be included among the Constitutional Officers. Alfred Goldsmith, at age 23, was chosen as the first Editor, and he continued in the post for over four decades until he retired with the title of Editor Emeritus in 1953. He had received his doctorate at age 21 from Columbia University and had taught there and at City College of New York. He became a gemologist of repute (this writer was in attendance at IRE Board meetings in New York when he received telephone queries from Tiffany's). He would later hold patents on the first two-dial radio receiver and on the shadow-mask tube for color television. Goldsmith had access to abroad array of technical people, and he was able to persuade well-connected engineers and scientists to contribute papers to the PROCEEDINGS.

An early portrait of Alfred N. Goldsmith, the founding
Editor of the PROCEEDINGS. Goldsmith served as editor for
41 years, after which he held the title of Editor Emeritus for
over two decades until his death in 1974. (Photograph courtesy
of IEEE Center for the History of Electrical Engineering.)

 The IRE was founded near the end of the age of spark transmitters, when arcs or radio alternators were becoming the favored means of high-power generation for transmitters. In 1912 detectors for radio signals had advanced to the carborundum-crystal level or to the gaseous three-element audion of Lee de Forest - neither were paragons of sensitivity or stability. De Forest clung to his gaseous audion and the use of a positive grid voltage. But a young inventor, Fritz Lowenstein, had a patent on the use of the triode with negative grid voltage. He crossed trails with E. F. W. Alexanderson of General Electric, who asked for a sample tube that he turned over to Irving Langmuir of the G. E. Research Laboratory. Langmuir saw possibilities in the device, foreseeing that if it were pumped to a very high vacuum, and a negative grid bias were used, the audion would become a stable and predictable device.

Beginning with a paper by Langmuir in 1915 (the three-halves power law of the diode), the PROCEEDINGS was to chronicle the development of the vacuum tube over its life span of approximately 50 years. Work similar to Langmuir's was carried out by Harold D. Arnold of the Bell Company. The triode developed by Arnold was instrumental in the success of the first (1915) Bell system transcontinental telephone line, being the first successful repeater. Edwin H. Armstrong published his paper on regeneration in the PROCEEDINGS in 1915, which set off many years of techno-legal litigation.

The selection of the optimum operating frequency for long distances was a vexing problem in the early years. In Marconi's equipment the antenna was part of the tuned circuit, and as he went to larger antennas for greater distances, he moved to lower frequencies. He believed the lower frequencies to be necessary for long distance. This choice was challenged about 1922 by radio amateurs using much shorter waves, which benefited from reflections from the ionosphere.

A photograph of the audion receiver, reproduced from
"The Audion Detector & Amplifier" by Lee de Forest
from the March 1914 issue of the PROCEEDINGS.

 The original intent had been for the PROCEEDINGS to publish papers presented before meetings of the Institute, but this policy was gradually abandoned under pressure of numbers of papers and the need for prompt publication reporting research progress.  Inherently possible with invited papers was the compilation of special issues, devoted to a single important topic. The first such issue, of 400 pages, appeared in October 1951 on the subject of color television. There have now been over 150 issues, with the largest in May 1962, commemorating the 50th anniversary of the founding of the I.R.E. This issue was organized by Editor Emeritus Goldsmith, called back to duty. The way for this had been prepared in 1958, when this writer, as Editor, asked the Board of Directors to commit future funds to cover the costs of what developed into a 1200 page issue.

The changing make-up of the profession served by the PROCEEDINGS during its nearly 80 years may be seen by considering an early issue raised in its pages: Who were properly included as "radio engineers"? As first raised, the question concerned whether to include telegraph and telephone engineers; this was ultimately resolved by their inclusion along with radio engineers as "communications engineers." The subject surfaced again after World War II, this time concerning engineers and scientists whose interests transcended communications. The issue was perhaps finally resolved by the merger of the IRE and the AIEE, when all those concerned with the electron or its waves were covered by the phrase "electrical and electronics engineers." Today the scope of the IEEE embraces all electrical, electronics, and computer engineering - from algorithms and codes, through control and power systems, to electromagnetics and lightwave technology.

John D. Ryder

John D. Ryder, former dean of engineering at Michigan State University, now retired, was twice Editor of the PROCEEDINGS, 1958-1959 and 1963-1964. He is the author of several books, the most recent (with Donald G. Fink) being Engineers and Electrons, IEEE PRESS, 1984.