Chapter 2: The IRE Professional Group on Communications Systems, 1952-1964

Meanwhile, the IRE allowed the formation of semi-autonomous Professional Groups as a way to deal with the increased growth and complexity of their field and organization. In the early 1950s, two IRE members, John L. Callahan and George T. Royden, were instrumental in organizing a new Professional Group in the field of communications. On 25 February, 1952 this group, the IRE Professional Group on Radio Communications, came into formal existence. At first the new Group limited its scope to radio in order to avoid direct competition with the AIEE in the field of wire communications. Within a few months, however, the IRE Board of Directors recommended that the new Group expand its scope to cover all forms of communication and to change its name to the IRE Professional Group on Communications Systems (PGCS). In September 1952 the Group did so and expanded its scope to include "communication activities and related problems in the field of radio and wire telephone, telegraph and facsimile, such as practiced by commercial and governmental agencies in marine, aeronautical, radio relay, coaxial cable and fixed station services." This broadened scope welded together and gave a common home to the several Technical Committees which had dealt with various facets of communications engineering since 1937. This group, the forerunner of the IEEE Communications Society, thus had an official founding date of 25 February 1952 and was the 19th such IRE Group to be formed. George T. Royden was the first Chairman of the Group, with Murray G. Crosby, John L. Callahan, and John Hessel serving as Vice Chairman, Secretary, and Treasurer respectively.

The Group began with just under 600 members in 1952 and almost immediately established chapters in Washington, San Diego, Chicago, New York City, Philadelphia, and Cedar Rapids (home of Collins Radio) to accommodate its rapidly increasing membership. By early 1955 Secretary John Callahan felt that PGCS had passed through its growing pains and had reached maturity as one of the important Groups in the IRE. Later that year the Administrative Committee (AdCom) formulated plans to publish a newsletter to keep its far-flung and growing membership informed of Group activities. By the end of 1957 the Group had a membership of just over 2500, and a year later it had eleven active chapters around the country. In 1958 PGCS established two annual awards, an Achievement Award and an award for the best article in the Transactions. PGCS selected Dr. Harold H. Beverage as the first recipient of the Achievement Award and co-authors Robert T. Adams and B. M. Mindes for the Transactions Contribution Award. Also in 1958 the Board considered ways to increase membership by encouraging non-US engineers to join and by allowing AIEE members to affiliate with PGCS. These membership initiatives, coupled with the importance of communications engineering, helped PGCS to reach the impressive figure of just over 4200 members in 1962, just before the IRE-AIEE merger.

One of the first actions of the new Group was to inaugurate an ambitious array of conferences, such as the annual Aeronautical Communications Symposium (AEROCOM) held for its first four years in the Rome-Utica, NY, area. This conference was renamed the National Communications Symposium in 1959 and it continued under its new name until 1963. PGCS also co-sponsored conferences with other IRE Groups and with the AIEE. Most importantly, PGCS co-sponsored the first GLOBECOM with the AIEE Communications Division in 1956. GLOBECOM continued to be a successful conference, and the 1961 meeting hosted 610 registrants, 240 speakers, and 25 exhibition booths. At the end of 1957 the Group began planning for a conference on modern electronic communications to be sponsored jointly with the Professional Group on Vehicular Communications. By 1959, with a membership of over 2700, the Committee decided that both the quantity and quality of technical papers were high enough to support two PGCS national meetings a year.

The new Group grew dramatically and began planning for a wide range of activities. Perhaps its most far-reaching decision was to begin publication of the IRE Transactions on Communications Systems, the forerunner of today's IEEE Transactions on Communications. At first, PGCS issued two Transactions issues per year, but because of the increasing volume of submissions the publication schedule increased to three issues a year in 1955 and four a year in 1959.

As early as 1956, the PGCS Administrative Committee explored ways to make the Group a professional home for engineers working in all fields of communications. In that year PGCS leaders viewed the overlapping fields of interest among the 23 IRE Professional Groups as both a problem and an opportunity. A. C. Peterson sent a letter to the Chairmen of the other 22 Groups asking them to meet to discuss this overlap and what to do about it. 18 of 22 Group chairmen replied, 13 expressing interest in attending such a meeting and 5 declining to attend. PGCS's AdCom looked favorably upon a proposal to merge PGCS with other Professional Groups like Antennas and Propagation, Marine Communications, Vehicular Communications, and Microwave Theory and Techniques.

Although nothing came of this effort, the AdCom again in 1960 took up the issue of the proliferation of Professional Groups. AdCom Chairman Capt. Christian L. Engleman noted that IRE officials had become concerned with the explosion of the Groups, which now numbered 27 with several petitions pending. While Engleman credited the Professional Group system with keeping the IRE "free from internal explosion," he and other IRE officials now worried that the proliferation of these groups "threatened" the IRE "with mediocrity because of dilution." Engleman cited the decline in attendance at Professional Group chapter meetings and conferences as signs of this problem. PGCS, in particular, had "seen the formation of other groups that have slowly taken away bits and pieces of our broad interests in Communications Systems." The Professional Group on Military Electronics (PGMIL), for example, "took away much" of PGCS's activity in military communications. Engleman suggested expanding the scope of PGCS, merging it with Professional Groups in closely related technological areas, and renaming the merged Group either the "Professional Group on Communications and Electronics Systems" or the "Professional Group on Electronics Systems." As a first step the PGCS AdCom initiated discussion with the PGMIL AdCom regarding a merger. On 20 March 1961, the PGCS AdCom narrowly approved (by a vote of 7-6) a motion agreeing to the merger. Although PGMIL declined to enter into the merger, the two Groups continued to work closely together on jointly sponsored conferences. While no mergers took place between PGCS and other IRE Professional Groups, these discussions in the 1950s and early 1960s showed that the Administrative Committee sought ways to overcome professional over-specialization by making PGCS the central organization for engineers working in the general field of communications. This willingness to accommodate a wide range of activities would prove valuable when the PGCS and the AIEE's Communications Division merged in 1964.

Next Chapter: IEEE Group on Communication Technology, 1964-1972