IEEE History Center: Programs & Projects

IEEE Global History Network: A wiki-based platform which allows IEEE members and organizational units to collaboratively preserve and share their history.  The Global History Network (GHN) hosts the Milestones, Oral Histories, STARS, and Archives programs (see below), and also allows IEEE members to contribute to Wikipedia-style topic articles or to preserve their own first-hand histories.

Milestone Program:The IEEE established the Electrical Engineering Milestones program in 1983 to honor significant achievements in the history of electrical and electronics engineering.

Oral Histories:  The Center conducts oral histories with leading engineers. There are more than 450 full transcript histories on the IEEE Global History Network.

IEEE STARS: STARS is an online compendium of invited, peer-reviewed articles on the history of major developments in electrical and computer science and technology. Although written for a general audience, these articles are meant to provide authoritative information, valuable in itself, but also useful as starting points for further investigations.

IEEE Archives: The IEEE Archives is a relatively small (approximately 15 cubic meters) collection of documents and other archival material that documents the history of IEEE and its predecessor organizations AIEE and IRE. The strongest areas in its collection document the histories of AIEE and IRE, the merger between the two that created IEEE in 1963, and the history of the overall IEEE between 1963 and 1984. The Archives, in general collects the history of the overall institute, and does not seek to collect the history of IEEE's many organizational units, but instead encouraged those units to use the GHN to preserve their material.

IEEE History Center Publications: As part of its mission to bring the history of technology to a wide audience, the IEEE History Center has been busy with a number of publishing initiatives. The Center is proud to unveil Bell Labs Memoirs: Voices of Innovation which will be available in both hard cover and Kindle® editions from www.amazon.com in November 2011, and US Federal Government & Innovation, available now as an e-book to download from IEEE-USA’s Today’s Engineer store.

IEEE Fellowship:  The IEEE Life Members' Fellowship in Electrical History supports either one year of full-time graduate work in the history of electrical science and technology at a college or university of recognized standing, or up to one year of post-doctoral research.

Internship:   The intern program seeks to provide research experience for graduate students in the history of electrical and computer technologies. It is intended for furture historians, and is not suitable for engineering students unless there is a strong history component to their studies.

IEEE Life Member Prize Paper:  The prize is awarded annually for the best paper on the history of electrical technology published during the preceding year.

Conferences:  Historical conferences under the auspices of the History Center

Special Projects:  The History Center undertakes special projects for organizational units of IEEE.

Rutgers Activities:  History Center Staff teach courses at Rutgers University.