The electromagnetic revolution in the late 19th century profoundly changed technology and society in all aspects of human life. While the mathematical theory and practical use of electrical technologies is a relatively recent event, electrical and magnetic phenomena such as lightning, St. Elmo’s fire, and the shocks of various fishes and eels have been observed…

Technological progress and invention is not always a straight line, and often failures and defeats can unexpectedly lead to innovation. Elisha Gray, who on 14 February, 1876 had submitted a caveat to the patent office for a telephone just after Alexander Graham Bell’s patent was submitted, lost rights to the telephone after a lengthy legal…

By Alexander B. Magoun, Ph.D., IEEE HISTORY CENTER When you come across a list of famous people who are engineers, it typically contains celebrities who started with an education in engineering but then switched to something completely different: think of Rowan Atkinson, Cindy Crawford, or Montel Williams. Left off these lists is Edwin Moses, who…

By Robert Colburn and Philip Lee, IEEE History Center It is not a sudden discovery; it is an evolution. For every discovery, there is a background and there is going to be a future.” Leslie Geddes Can an understanding of history foster innovation? Certainly many great innovators have said so.  Here in their own words—via…

By Robert Colburn, IEEE History Center Mobile phones perform multiple tasks by transmitting and receiving on many different frequencies. For example, when the user first dials, there is a carrier frequency that the phone and the base station communicate with each other to set up the call, establish which cell tower the phone is in…

Alexander B. Magoun, Ph.D., IEEE History Center Minicomputers are back, but then they never really left.  In 2015, marketers of personal computers the size of paperback books or grapefruits sell them as “mini computers” when compared to PCs from, say, 2005. In the early 2010s, the innovation of circuit boards a few square centimeters in…

Alexander B. Magoun, IEEE History Center IEEE-USA InSight, 19 January 2016 In June 1937, Radio Corporation of America (RCA) engineer Loren Jones arrived in Moscow to fulfill a contract signed 23 months earlier. Jones and five other engineers spent nearly a year installing an electronic television system in the Soviet Union’s capital and transferring electronics…

By Robert Colburn, Research Coordinator, IEEE History Center Supply chain problems and their complex causes have been getting extensive coverage recently. Supply chain (sometimes also called resource chain) disruptions and price chokepoints are not new, especially in the fields of technology. Alternating current distribution systems became preferred over direct current in part because a French…

By Robert Colburn, Research Coordinator, IEEE History Center Tugboats are the workhorses of our complicated food and supply chain and of international commerce. Cargo ships need them to dock and to leave harbor safely; tugboats also push and pull barges from port to port carrying a wide variety of cargoes and shipping containers. In emergencies,…

Daylight Saving Time in World War I and the Electrical Industry For longer than the last fifty years in the United States, autumn has been a time when the clocks fall back an hour for the ending of daylight saving time. The practice has always been controversial since its adoption and remains so up to…