IEEE Global Museum Project Educates, Honors and Inspires

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IEEE Global Museum Project Educates, Honors and Inspires

For over a century, IEEE leaders have considered creating a museum to recognize the technical achievements of IEEE members, the organization’s evolution, and the bigger stories of technological milestones in its life-changing fields. But the challenge of housing the world’s ever-expanding accomplishments in electrical, electronic, and computer technologies and sciences has always overwhelmed that vision. Instead, IEEE History Center staff have created fixed and travelling exhibits on IEEE people and technologies, ranging from “Lines and Waves,” about the contributions of Maxwell and Faraday, to “Moon Dreams,” on space exploration in fact and fiction. Thousands of people in IEEE have enjoyed seeing and learning how its members have contributed to solving the world’s big and small problems, from travelling under the Hudson River in New York to the efficient selection of the music you want when you want it. The question is, how can we make those contributions familiar to the general public around the world, and educate people on IEEE members’ incredible, resourceful, and creative solutions? Inspired by Life Fellow Dr. John Impagliazzo, who has generously underwritten the IEEE History Center’s Historical Showcase Project, center staff led by the late Dr. Lisa Nocks found a solution. Using donations and loans of objects and documents, the answer is to partner in every IEEE Region with volunteers and museums, libraries, and other public spaces. Center staff and consultants will design, curate, and install exhibits that showcase member contributions to the history of the local area, region, or world. An online version of each exhibit will enable virtual visits by those who cannot attend in person, long after the exhibit itself is replaced by a new one. Thanks to a seed grant from the IEEE Life Members Committee and its chair, T. Scott Atkinson, the pilot year has been funded for 2022. One of the two pilot exhibits will be installed at IEEE’s office in New York City: a history of IEEE Spectrum magazine and its coverage of over fifty years of cutting-edge technologies. Inaugurated in 1964, Spectrum set a new standard for technical society membership publications with its full-color covers and informed, accessible articles on the full gamut of high tech and the people and organizations innovating them. The second pilot exhibit—about IEEE’s first Medal of Honor recipient, the radio pioneer Edwin Howard Armstrong— will debut in Region 5 (the south central U.S.). Assisted by a generous anonymous gift, the IEEE History Center is developing a public exhibit on his life and times, in which Armstrong invented practical circuits for regeneration of continuous wave wireless signals; superheterodyne tuning of radio frequencies; and wideband frequency modulation transmission and reception. The soft opening took place at the San Antonio Museum of Science and Technology (SAMSAT) in Texas, in conjunction with the February 2022 IEEE Board series. SAMSAT was being expanded for a public opening in March. With continued support from IEEE, its members, and the STEM/MINT community, the IEEE History Center looks forward to developing and circulating more exhibits around the world.

Children on a field trip to a museum of technology. (Courtesy IEEE) Dr. John Impagliazzo examines some of the artifacts in one of the IEEE History Center’s historical exhibits. (Courtesy IEEE)

SOURCE

A.Magoun, The IEEE Global Museum: Let’s exhibit around the world to educate, honor & inspire, IEEE History Center News, Nov. 30, 2021, with a shorter version in IEEE Foundation: Focus, Dec 2021.