News

At the end of 2024, several important projects of the IEEE Global Museum,  presented by the IEEE History Center, came to fruition, not least the launch of its flagship traveling exhibit Unseen Signals: E. Howard Armstrong’s Radio Revolution. Curated by IEEE History Center historians Alexander B. Magoun and Dr. Daniel Jon Mitchell, the exhibit opened on 1 November 2024 at the National Museum of Industrial History (NMIH) in Bethlehem, PA, USA.  New Jersey, USA residents will be excited to learn that the next venue has been confirmed: InfoAge Science and History Museums in Wall, NJ, USA, May through December 2025.

Dr. Mitchell was also busy preparing a special anniversary exhibit, Our Mobile World,  for the IEEE Vehicular Technology Conference (VTC) held in October 2024 in Washington, DC, USA. The exhibit commemorated two major milestones for the IEEE Vehicular Technology Society (VTS): the 75th anniversary of its founding as the Professional Group on Vehicular and Railroad Communications of the Institute of Radio Engineers (IRE) in 1949, and the 100th VTC.

1n 1949, the two-way vehicular communications technology, pioneered in police radio, was spreading to other public safety agencies and power utilities. At the same time, WWII portable “handie-talkie” technology was being adapted for industry and civil defense.  After that, VTS evolved in two major phases: during the 1960s and 1970s with the development of vehicular electronics—first with solid state devices and then integrated circuits—and then during the late 1980s – early 1990s with the commercial rise of cellular telephones.

Our Mobile World presents key events in all these fields and features a ten-question interactive timeline game spanning a century of related inventions. The timeline game emerged as a spinoff of a similar game created in partnership with IEEE Strategic Marketing for the 2024 Consumer Electronics Show (CES) that addressed IEEE technologies more broadly. These initiatives illustrate the IEEE History Center’s commitment to raising awareness among IEEE members of their shared legacies and promoting them to the public. 

The IEEE History Center relies on the support of generous donors to the IEEE Foundation to make these programs possible.

A guest at the Unseen Signals VIP reception at the National Museum of Industrial History considers the business and politics of radio broadcasting. In the background is a portable Radiola 24 superhet. Photo Credit Mario Acerra.

Photo at top: Gregory Su, an Electrical and Computer Engineering graduate student at Carnegie Mellon University, plays the Electricity and Electronics timeline game at the VTC Conference in Washington, DC, USA. Photo Credit Daniel Jon Mitchell.