Many IEEE members who accumulate historic engineering artifacts typically provide them to the IEEE History and Heritage group, which incorporates the IEEE History Center, to show. To convey these artifacts to the general public, the group created the IEEE Global Museum, which curates touring displays for show at conferences and in libraries, universities, and different venues.
This system educates folks about how technological progress has unfolded over generations, and the way engineers and researchers construct on previous achievements to profit humanity.
Curating the displays has been rewarding, says Daniel Jon Mitchell, director of the group’s heritage applications.
“Folks inform me that they’re genuinely moved by having historical past and artifacts defined to them in an accessible, intelligible means,” Mitchell says. “When individuals are moved and emotionally affected by what you’re doing, they’re going to keep in mind that. And I believe that’s a part of the ability of what we’re doing.”
The newest touring exhibit was on show in April in New York City throughout the IEEE Honors Ceremony, which celebrates engineering pioneers who’ve developed applied sciences that modified how folks join with the world. Attendees explored the Microchips That Shook the World exhibit, which drew inspiration from IEEE Spectrum’s Chip Hall of Fame. The exhibit conveys the roles integrated circuits play in fields akin to signal processing, audio engineering, and telecommunications. The Commodore 64, one of many artifacts on show, stirred up treasured childhood recollections for visitors who had used the house laptop.
Different displays have targeted on early radio innovations and energy and communications applied sciences.
The World Museum works with IEEE societies to mark their anniversaries by decoding and displaying pertinent objects.
A tribute to radio pioneer Edwin Howard Armstrong
The thought of a touring museum got here to fruition in 2024 after Alexander Magoun, IEEE’s outreach historian, related with Mike Molnar. The IEEE affiliate member owns one in every of six superheterodyne radio prototypes developed by Edwin Howard Armstrong, who in all probability is finest recognized for inventing the FM radio system. Armstrong obtained the primary IEEE Medal of Honor in 1917.
The radio converts incoming frequencies into a hard and fast, decrease intermediate one utilizing an area oscillator and a frequency mixer. The expertise paved the way in which for contemporary digital communications gadgets. The prototype grew to become the focus of the World Museum’s flagship Unseen Signals: E. Howard Armstrong’s Radio Revolution exhibit, which celebrates the inventor’s life and his affect on the broadcasting business and wireless communications.
“The radio prototype is among the most unbelievable items that we might placed on show,” Mitchell says. He and Magoun sourced different artifacts together with an Audion utilized in Armstrong’s experiments on wi-fi sign amplification; a collection of client merchandise that tried to money in on radio’s recognition, together with a flour sifter and laxatives; and a Motorola Walkie-Talkie from the Korean Battle. They had been from museums or personal collectors alongside the East Coast of the United States.
“Other than [Guglielmo] Marconi, Armstrong is essentially the most vital contributor to the historical past of radio,” Mitchell says. “The exhibit will not be solely a biography but additionally a narrative of the cultural and political implications his work had.”
Guests can play 15 brief clips of previous radio broadcasts protecting politics, religion, sports activities, or one other subject.
The Armstrong exhibit was unveiled in 2024 on the National Museum of Industrial History in Bethlehem, Pa.
The 93-square-meter exhibit continues to be touring round the US. It’s on show till 15 August on the Pavek Museum, in St. Louis Park, Minn.
From 21 November till 9 Could 2027, it’s scheduled to be on the Museum of Innovation and Science in Schenectady, N.Y. Entry to the museum is free for IEEE members with a digital membership card.
Collaborating with IEEE societies
The IEEE Historical past and Heritage group collaborates with IEEE societies to create displays for particular occasions. In 2024 Mitchell curated an exhibit to have fun the seventy fifth anniversary of the IEEE Vehicular Technology Society and its a hundredth Vehicular Technology Conference. The Our Cellular World exhibit was launched on the convention, held in October in Washington, D.C.
“The society’s management helped me focus consideration on key developments that meant rather a lot to its members,” Mitchell says.
“The IEEE World Museum needs to current displays that join with its audiences, whether or not these are IEEE members or the general public,” he says. “Simply figuring out what was essential traditionally doesn’t imply that this can resonate, so I actually appreciated the perception.”
The exhibit’s artifacts included a Motorola DynaTac “brick” cellphone, a CB radio from the Nineteen Eighties, and one of many earliest handheld GPS receivers. Guests performed an interactive recreation to check their information spanning a century of wi-fi expertise, motor automobiles, and cellular communication innovations.
Mitchell labored this yr with the IEEE Dielectrics and Electrical Insulation Society to launch a digital exhibit, Powering Up, which is on the market on the World Museum web site. It offers an summary of high-voltage power engineering, and it highlights the roles that producers General Electric and Westinghouse performed in making long-distance, high-voltage transmission {of electrical} energy attainable. Movies and images of impulse mills and exams are featured within the exhibit.
Nvidia CEO and cofounder Jensen Huang, who obtained the 2026 IEEE Medal of Honor, exploring the Microchips That Shook the World exhibit.IEEE Conferences, Occasions & Experiences
One picture reveals lightning arcing between high-voltage mills. Others present the impulse mills used on the 1939 World’s Fair in New York Metropolis, demonstrations of synthetic lightning, and U.S. President Ronald Reagan visiting GE’s high-voltage laboratory in Pittsfield, Mass.
The historical past of microchips
The Unseen Alerts exhibit was created for giant venues, however the Microchips That Shook the World exhibit was designed to be displayed in numerous areas, Mitchell says. Artifacts are premounted to make sure simple setup, and so they’re encased in glass as a result of many are uncommon.
Microchips are essential for sign processing, audio engineering, and telecommunications, making them a focal point regardless of their small dimension, Mitchell says. One uncommon artifact on show is the Kodak KAF-1300 image sensor. Invented in 1986, it was utilized in one of many earliest digital cameras made for photojournalists.
The KAF-1300’s picture sensor chip “is credited with bringing digital cameras out of the laboratory,” Mitchell says. “Solely round 500 had been produced.”
Guests can perceive how transistors work, he says, by urgent buttons to show them on and off.
“There are billions of transistors in fashionable microchips,” he notes, “and you may mix them in a means that performs logical features.”
Unseen Alerts, one in every of two equivalent displays, was curated by Mitchell and Stephen Cass, IEEE Spectrum’s particular tasks editor, with assist from a number of Spectrum colleagues. Collectively, they served as on-site docents for visitors on the IEEE Honors Ceremony.
The show additionally featured a preview of IEEE’s immersive “Contained in the Microchip” video undertaking, which delves beneath the silicon floor of Nvidia’s NV20 chip, utilizing forensic images and computer-generated renderings. The video, to be launched this yr, goals to show center college college students in regards to the microchips which can be inside their gaming gadgets.
The exhibit was on show on the IEEE Electronic Components and Technology Conference, held in Could in Orlando, Fla. Later this yr, members will be capable to go to it on the Computer History Museum in Mountain View, Calif., and the University of Waterloo, in Ontario, Canada.
The IEEE World Museum is made attainable because of donations to the IEEE Foundation.
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