The Making of a Profession

322 Pages·2008·14.17 MB·English

THE MAKING OF A PROFESSION:
A CENTURY OF ELECTRICAL
ENGINEERING IN AMERICA
A CENTURY OF ELECTRICAL PROGRESS
CENTENNIAL TASK FORCE
John D. Ryder, Chairman
Donald S. Brereton, Vice Chairman
Nathan Cohn Donald T. Michael
Robert F. Cotellessa William W. Middleton
Lawrence P. Grayson Mac E. Van Valkenburg
HONORARY CENTENNIAL COMMITTEE
Richard J. Gowen, 1984 IEEE President
James B. Owens, Vice Chairman
Charles A. Eldon, Vice Chairman
John Bardeen Ian M. Ross
William R. Hewlett Roland W. Schmitt
William C. Norris Mark Shepherd, Jr.
Robert N. Noyce John W. Simpson
Simon Ramo Charles H. Townes
THE MAKING OF A PROFESSION:
A CENTURY OF ELECTRICAL
ENGINEERING IN AMERICA
,//, A1icha/A1cA1ahon
IEEE
• PRESS
The Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers, Inc., New York
IEEE PRESS
1984 Editorial Board
M. E. Van Valkenburg, Editor in Chief
M. G. Morgan, Editor, Selected Reprint Series
Glen Wade, Editor, Special Issue Series
J.M. Aein Thelma Estrin R. C. Jaeger
J. K. Aggarwal L. H. Fink E. A. Marcatili
J. E. Brittain S. K. Gandhi J. S. Meditch
R. W. Brodersen Irwin Gray W. R. Perkins
R. F. Cotellessa H. A. Haus A. C. Schell
M. S. Dresselhaus E.W. Herold Herbert Sherman
W. R. Crone, Managing Editor
Emily Gross, Associate Edita"
Stephen Goldberg, Designer
This book was set in Goudy Oldstyle.
Copyright © 1984 by
THE INSTITUTE OF ELECTRICAL
AND ELECTRONICS ENGINEERS, INC.
345 East 4 7th Street
New York, NY 10017
All rights reserved.
PRINTED IN THE UNITED STATES OF AMERICA
IEEE Order Number PC01677
Library of Congress Cataloging in Publication Data
McMahon, A. Michal (Adrian Michal), 1937-
The making of a profession.
Includes index.
1. electric engineering-United States-History.
2. Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers
History. I. Title.
TK23.M39 1984 621.3'0973 83-22325
ISBN 0-87942-173-8
TABLE OF CONTENTS
Foreword ix
Preface xiii
Chapter 1: At the Dawn of Electrical Engineering 1
A gathering of "practical electricians" . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 1
Telegraphy and the early electrical community . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 6
Western Union and the making of an electrical context........ 12
Takeoff: The rise of electric lighting and power . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 17
Founding time: The American Institute of Electrical
Engineers (AIEE) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 27
Chapter 2: The New Engineering Age 31
Who shall be members? . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 31
Ambiguous engineers: Telegraph electricians and inventor-
entrepreneurs . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 36
Practical physicists, engineering education, and the Institute . . . . . . 43
Deepening engineering content: The engineering scientists of
the 1890's . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 47
The expanding corporate context: Research laboratories and
engineering departments . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 50
The new conditions and engineering professionalism . . . . . . . . . . . . . 56
Chapter 3: Electrical Engineers and the Age of Organization 61
"Upon common ground".................................... 61
Educating the electrical engineer: Steinmetz's ideal course . . . . . . . . 67
Training the electrical engineer: Dugald Jackson and
"best practice" . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 70
The industrial connection: Standardizing engineering practice,
the early years . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .. . . 79
The AIEE and the world of standards . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 8 7
Steinmetz and the cooperative nation . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 92
Chapter 4: The Professional Standing of Electrical Engineering 99
Insull's dinner . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 99
Engineers and "systematization" in the power industry . . . . . . . . . . . . 102
"Commercial engineering" .................................. 107
v
The ethics code of 1912: Engineers versus engineers ............. 112
"Do not include questions of professional standing" . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 11 7
The AIEE and the diversity of electrical engineering . . . . . . . . . . . . . 124
The birth of the Institute of Radio engineers ................... 127
Chapter 5: The Radio Era: The Expanding Context of Electrical
Engineering 133
The engineer and the radio phenomenon . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 133
Electrical engineers and the Great War: Intimations
of a new order ........................................ 13 7
The consolidation of radio technology . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 146
Sarnoff, the IRE, and the consolidation of the industry ........ 151
Supersystems and the context of radio engineering ............ 156
"Popular broadcasting" and the defining of radio .............. 161
Radio broadcasting: The engineering response . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 164
Chapter 6: The New World of Electronics Engineering 175
The tree of electronics ................................... 175
Electronics magazine and the decade of the tube . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 17 7
Frederick Terman and the rise of electronics ................. 183
The AIEE and the electronics engineer ...................... 188
The "technological war" .................................. 195
The legacy of the war: A new world . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 206
Chapter 7: The Growth of Electronics and the Path to Merger 213
The electrical societies and the "great growth industry" . . . . . . . . . 213
The organizational response ............................... 215
Nuclear fission, electronics, and the power industry ........... 218
The technological landscape of the IRE . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 223
Educating the engineer in the postwar world . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 23 2
The path to merger: The founding of the Institute of Electrical
and Electronics Engineers . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 239
Chapter 8: The IEEE and the New Professionalism 245
Looking ahead .......................................... 245
The IEEE and the "engineering mission" of the 1960's ......... 248
War, jobs, and the "road to professionalism" ................. 250
The programmatic response . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 258
The new professionalism . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 263
vi
References 267
Index 291
Credits 303
Author's Biography 304
vii

FOREWORD
T
he history of an engineering society can be dull; this one is not. Dr.
McMahon's history of the IEEE and its predecessors marks a bold
departure in writing the history of engineering societies. The dilemma
of such an act lies in the fact that the history of the society is part of a much
larger history. The committees, officers, and constitutions constitute only the
outer husk. They find their full meaning when seen in the context of the
history of a field. It has become quite common to tell the history of an
engineering discipline without reference to its professional organizations. But
the history of neither is complete without the other. The engineering society
not only fosters the technical development of a field, but it is the means by
which a profession can express itself and articulate its values.
It is very difficult to tell the story of the IEEE and its predecessors in the
context of the development of electrical engineering (for brevity I will under
stand "electrical" to include "electronic"). Despite some very good progress in
recent years, much of that history remains to be told. It is an enormously
complex undertaking in itself. But even if this information were all available
the task would remain very difficult because there is just so much of it. If it
were all told, the story of the IEEE might well be buried under the mass of
other material. Dr. McMahon has found a solution to the dilemma by
judicious selectivity. He does not, indeed could not, present anything like a
complete history of electrical engineering. Rather he has selected representa
tive figures and critical events in order to capture the essence of that history.
He has succeeded so well that his work may be misinterpreted. It is not a
complete history of electrical engineering. It is a series of deftly drawn vi
gnettes which capture enough of the engineering history to illuminate the
history of the IEEE and its predecessors.
But the sketches do capture much of that which makes the history of
electrical engineering important. The early parts of the story contain bio
graphical studies of engineers as diverse as telegraph electrician and technical
writer and consultant, Franklin Pope; eminent engineering scientist, social
ist, and General Electric "wizard," Charles Proteus Steinmetz; and the ag
gressive genius of the electric power industry, Samuel lnsull. Dr. McMahon
gives equal attention to pivotal events in the emergence of professional
electrical engineering. For example, in Chapter l, he examines the "takeoff"
of power engineering and its relation to the founding of the American
Institute of Electrical Engineers (AIEE). In C}:iapter 2, he traces the intel
lectual evolution of professional electrical engineering to the point of its
codification in the 1902 Constitution of the AIEE.
Although Dr. McMahon discusses only two engineering educators at
ix