IEEE History Center: Video Oral Histories

The very first video played on MTV in 1981 was Video Killed the Radio Star by The Buggles.  But maybe it should have been entitled Video Killed the Audio Star.  Now a days we are turning to the web and streaming video to get our news, learn about history and even listen to our favorite music.

The IEEE History Center, since the 1980s, has conducted audio oral histories.  We have more than 400 oral history tapes in the IEEE Archives, all in various formats, including reel-to-reel and standard cassette.  But as of March 2007 we too converted to the digital image and are now conducting video oral histories.  There are so many positive aspects to doing the video oral histories and we will try to cover as many as possible.

We invested in a high definition camcorder to record the oral histories, and also worked with IEEE.tv to possibly utilize a professional film crew, when available.  For the staff there was a learning curve and we are now adapting.  We wanted to make sure that we captured the traditional oral history, but wanted to make sure that we are filming segments that can be used for the web.

The camcorder we purchased was the Canon HV20, which has the mini DVs and records in high definition.  The first video oral history was done with Jerry Minter of Denville, NJ. Jerry B. Minter was born in 1913 and became interested in radios at an early age.  In 1922 he saw an early crystal set, and in high school he was already helping to install and service radio sets.  He studied for one year at North Texas Agricultural College in Arlington and then went to MIT where he graduated in 1934 with a degree in electrical engineering. In his interview, Minter discusses many aspects of his long and still very active career.  He explains how one of his signal generators was at Pearl Harbor on the day of the attacks and the controversy over mechanical versus human failure.  He also talks about the formation of the North Jersey Subsection, working with J.W. McRae, its early chairs and the later merger of AIEE and IRE into the IEEE.  Throughout the interview, Minter discusses the difficulties of military work and the issue of classified information particularly during the war.  Minter also shares his experiences with Governor Charles Edison, son of Thomas Edison, and the stories Edison told him about his father and Henry Ford. 

The second was done with Earl Bakken, inventor of the first implantable pacemaker.  Rik Nebeker, Senior Research Historian at the History Center and Noel Bryson, IEEE.tv Producer, traveled to Minneapolis to film the oral history at Medtronics and at the beautiful Bakken Library.  They were able to capture the beginnings of Medtronics and Mr. Bakkens work with Dr. Lillihei.  As a side note, the invention of the first implantable pace maker is an IEEE Milestone.  The Bakken Library was gracious to allow IEEE.tv to film “b-roll” or extract footage within the Bakken, to incorporate in future IEEE.tv segments.

We Serve Many Masters

Once it was decided to change formats for our oral histories, many issues arose.  The first of which was: who is our audience?  Of course, first and foremost are the historians, scholars and researchers interested in the history of technology.  But we also have a large and eager audience who view IEEE.tv.  And, as we discovered, individuals who view IEEE.tv are not going to watch an entire hour of an oral history.  So it was decided that we would make excerpts available for the IEEE web site.  And this is where the real work comes in.  There are many steps to making these pieces ready for IEEE.tv (over 30 in all).  First we need to identify engineers to interview.  We thank our technical societies for providing the names.  The first two to approach us were the Signal Processing Society and the IEEE Ultrasonics, Ferroelectrics, and Frequency Control Society (UFFC).   We then started contacting the engineers to determine their availability.  Next we set up dates, but first we checked with IEEE.tv to see if a professional film crew would be available for the taping.  We also took into account the location of the engineers.  If there were clusters, in let’s say New England or Southern California, we would determine if it was financially possible to call in a professional film crew, or if we would use our own equipment.  One other option is to utilize a Media Lab at a local University (which we did with two subsequent oral histories.)  We then proceed with processing the video oral histories as we did with the audio, which is “stripped out” and transcribed in the traditional format.  The entire video will be archived and excerpts will be extracted for IEEE.tv.

One of the next steps is to identify those short pieces to be used by IEEE.tv and a script is written and a professional announcer is hired to record it.  It is all pieced together and we now have a new history piece for IEEE.tv.  One other thing we are very proud of it that we have our own separate History category within IEEE.tv.  “Stay tuned” for more!

To view the documentary, visit IEEE.tv and

in the Public Access area, scroll down to Oral History.