IEEE History Center: History | 
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Since the formation of IEEE in 1963 there has been a standing History Committee responsible for promoting the collection, writing and dissemination of historical information in the fields covered by IEEE technical and professional activities, as well as historical information about the IEEE and its predecessor organizations.
In 1979, the IEEE Board of Directors endorsed the concept of a professionally staffed history center to support the work of the IEEE History Committee and allocated funds, and in 1980, the Center for the History of Electrical Engineering was established in the New York offices of the IEEE. For most of the first decade, the Center staff consisted of a director, an archivist or curator, and a part-time research assistant. The first director was Robert Friedel, and Ronald Kline succeeded him in 1984. These individuals and their staffs laid the groundwork for the Center, establishing it as a leading resource for electrical history.
The Center undertook many projects during its first decade. Most notable, perhaps, were three exhibits that circulated nationally: the first on Faraday and Maxwell, the second on the IEEE Centennial, and the third on Edison and the electric light. In addition, the Center collaborated on exhibits with the Smithsonian and other institutions. Perhaps most importantly the Center established the IEEE Milestones Program, overseen by the History Committee, wherein IEEE Sections could have recognized and publicized engineering achievements within their geographical area.
At the end of the decade, the History Committee determined that the Center should become a place where considerable historical research would be carried out. This decision was heavily influenced by a report prepared for the Committee by historian Terry Reynolds. In order to better carry out research, the Center moved in 1990 to the campus of Rutgers University in New Brunswick, New Jersey. This move was carried out under the leadership of the Center's third director, Bill Aspray, who had been hired in 1989.
With University support added to IEEE support, the Center was able to expand to a staff of three permanent Ph.D. historians, a rotating post-doc, a curator, a research assistant, and four Rutgers graduate-students working part-time as research assistants. Rik Nebeker joined the staff in 1990 as Research Historian (he has since been promoted to Senior Research Historian). Center staff carried out and published research projects on the National Science Foundation's role in the development of computing, the impact of the computer on meteorology, the history of the electric trolley, the history of radar, and many other topics. Oral history became a major activity, and more than 200 interviews were conducted in this period. (The interviews are transcribed, edited, and made available to researchers.) . A series of international conferences on the history of technology, held about every other year, were begun, and long-term cooperation was begun with sister groups, such as the History Committee of the IEEJ (Japan’s counterpart to the IEEE)
In 1997, Michael Geselowitz took over as the Center's Staff Director. With the guidance of the History Committee, the Center has embarked on a new phase in its own history, characterized by an increased emphasis on reaching out to engineers, to public-policy makers, to public-school teachers, and to a fourth, sometimes overlooked group of people concerned with electrical history--amateur historians and collectors. In 1998 he, Rik Nebeker, and the post-doc were joined in these efforts by Rob Colburn and Mary Ann Hoffman as Research Coordinator and Manager of Archival and Web Services, respectively. Programs and projects carried out by this team include a major overhaul of the Center’s web site, several IEEE Society histories, teaching and participating in the intellectual activity at Rutgers University, a workshop with the IEEJ in 2000, the Going Digital web history project sponsored by the Sloan Foundation, two more of the international conferences (1999 in New Brunswick, New Jersey, USA, on Women and Technology; 2001 in St. John’s, Newfoundland, Canada, on the History of telecommunications). The Center also began a more concerted effort to get word on history out to the IEEE membership beginning features in many IEEE publications, including a series of special millennium articles in Proceedings of the IEEE, a regular column in The Institute, occasional special articles for IEEE Spectrum, and regular e-features for Spectrum and IEEE Region publications.
In 2000, the History Center also increased its move in the direction of public outreach with the introduction of an entirely new program, the IEEE Virtual Museum. Funded largely by the IEEE Foundation, it is one of the few IEEE programs aimed directly at the general public and, particularly, a pre-college audience. Kim Breitfelder joined the staff as Project Manager, IEEE Virtual Museum, replacing one of the historian positions (she has since been promoted to Program Manager)
The Virtual Museum made its debut on 20 February 2002 with two exhibits. It quickly established its popularity both in terms of number of visitors and in critical acclaim. It has since grown to six exhibits
Also, in 2002, John Vardalas joined the staff as the IEEE Postdoctoral Fellow. He quickly made his mark by establishing a popular interdisciplinary Lecture Series at Rutgers on the interface of technology and society.
In 2003, the History Center staff was responsible for Philosophy Hall at Columbia University in New York being named a U.S. National Historic Landmark in 2003 (this is the building where Edwin Armstrong, winner of the first IEEE Medal of Honor in 1919, when it was the IRE, did most of his pioneering radio work). The Center also worked on a special project to copy to DVD and make accessible some very important privately held video interviews with computer pioneers.
Perhaps most importantly, the Milestones program passed its own Milestone, as the 50th Milestone was dedicated and IEEE Region 9—the last Region without a Milestone—received two recognitions.
In 2004, the History Center web site had more than 200 full-transcript oral histories on line and added the popular web feature “ Legacies,” biographies of exceptional engineers over the last 100 years. The Center's staff continues to contribute historical articles for Proceedings of the IEEE, IEEE Spectrum Online, IEEE-USA’s Today's Engineer and other internal publications. In 2004, we continued the expansion of the Virtual Museum and IEEE Milestones program, of the oral history collection, and of the Rutgers lecture series. In 2004, the Center also hosted the next of its international conferences, on the history of electronics, held in June at Bletchley Park in the UK. In addition, we conducted institutional history research projects with Eta Kappa Nu and with the Marconi Fellowship Foundation at Columbia University.
In 2006 and 2007, the History Center was involved in numerous Special Projects, including Society Anniversaries and Lectures. In addition, the web site completed a major overhaul, and it now uses the standard IEEE template. The oral history program began a move towards videotaping of the interviews, and is cooperating with IEEE.tv on historical programming. There are now almost 300 complete oral history transcripts online. The IEEE Milestones Program -- now with more than 80 Milestones -- continues to grow at a record pace. In 2007, the Center held its biannual conference, at New Jersey Institute of Technoloy in Newark, N.J., U.S.A, on the history of electric power. A guided tour of the Edison homestead, Glenmont, was included.
In 2008, John Vardalas was promoted to Outreach Historian, and Mary Ann Hoffman left IEEE, to be replaced by Dr. Sheldon Hochheiser. The focus of the Center is on building a new wiki-based web platform, the IEEE Global History Network, whose role will be to preserve collaboratively the historical legacy of electrical engineering and computing and all related fields and industries.
