Many IEEE members who gather historic engineering artifacts usually supply them to the IEEE History and Heritage group, which incorporates the IEEE History Center, to show. To carry these artifacts to the general public, the group created the IEEE Global Museum, which curates touring reveals 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 learn humanity.
Curating the reveals has been rewarding, says Daniel Jon Mitchell, director of the group’s heritage applications.
“Individuals inform me that they’re genuinely moved by having historical past and artifacts defined to them in an accessible, intelligible method,” Mitchell says. “When individuals are moved and emotionally affected by what you’re doing, they’re going to do not forget that. And I feel that’s a part of the ability of what we’re doing.”
The latest 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 comparable to signal processing, audio engineering, and telecommunications. The Commodore 64, one of many artifacts on show, stirred up treasured childhood reminiscences for friends who had used the house laptop.
Different reveals have centered on early radio innovations and energy and communications applied sciences.
The World Museum works with IEEE societies to mark their anniversaries by deciphering 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, linked with Mike Molnar. The IEEE affiliate member owns considered one of six superheterodyne radio prototypes developed by Edwin Howard Armstrong, who most likely is finest identified 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 a neighborhood oscillator and a frequency mixer. The know-how paved the way in which for contemporary digital communications units. 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 influence on the broadcasting trade and wireless communications.
“The radio prototype is without doubt one of 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 Warfare. They have been from museums or personal collectors alongside the East Coast of the United States.
“Except for [Guglielmo] Marconi, Armstrong is essentially the most important 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 quick clips of previous radio broadcasts protecting politics, religion, sports activities, or one other matter.
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 america. It’s on show till 15 August on the Pavek Museum, in St. Louis Park, Minn.
From 21 November till 9 Might 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 reveals for particular occasions. In 2024 Mitchell curated an exhibit to have a good time the seventy fifth anniversary of the IEEE Vehicular Technology Society and its a centesimal Vehicular Technology Conference. The Our Cell 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 so much to its members,” Mitchell says.
“The IEEE World Museum needs to current reveals that join with its audiences, whether or not these are IEEE members or the general public,” he says. “Simply realizing what was necessary traditionally doesn’t imply that this may 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 know-how, motor automobiles, and cell communication innovations.
Mitchell labored this 12 months with the IEEE Dielectrics and Electrical Insulation Society to launch a digital exhibit, Powering Up, which is offered on the World Museum web site. It gives 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 potential. Movies and photographs of impulse turbines 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 exhibits lightning arcing between high-voltage turbines. Others present the impulse turbines 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 Indicators exhibit was created for big 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 straightforward 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 have 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 trendy microchips,” he notes, “and you’ll mix them in a method that performs logical capabilities.”
Unseen Indicators, considered one of two similar reveals, was curated by Mitchell and Stephen Cass, IEEE Spectrum’s particular initiatives editor, with assist from a number of Spectrum colleagues. Collectively, they served as on-site docents for friends on the IEEE Honors Ceremony.
The show additionally featured a preview of IEEE’s immersive “Contained in the Microchip” video challenge, which delves beneath the silicon floor of Nvidia’s NV20 chip, utilizing forensic pictures and computer-generated renderings. The video, to be launched this 12 months, goals to show center college college students concerning the microchips which are inside their gaming units.
The exhibit was on show on the IEEE Electronic Components and Technology Conference, held in Might in Orlando, Fla. Later this 12 months, members will be capable of 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 potential due to donations to the IEEE Foundation.
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