In Memory of my Father, My First Engineering Teacher
Abner W. Day, 1907-2003.

I grew up on  a farm in one of the most rural parts of the US state of Illinois.  We raised corn, soy beans, wheat, cattle, hogs, and chickens (to use the terminology of US farmers).  In addition to knowing how to do those things,  my father was a competent electrician, plumber, mechanic, designer, builder, and accountant.  He needed those skills, and to some extent he taught me all of them.  He was, I realized much later in life, my first engineering teacher.   When I began studying engineering at the University of Illinois, I discovered there were many other students with backgrounds similar to mine, and the faculty had figured out that it was a good background for doing experimental research.  As undergraduates we were recruited to work in research labs.

Some people have asked me about doing hard work as a child.  It was hard work, but I have only a few memories of working to exhaustion.  I felt then that I was just participating in the family business, just like many of my peers did in their families.  And, yes, to answer another frequent question, it did instill a sense of responsibility, though I never felt I was being taught responsibility.  Well before my teenage years, my father taught me to use  expensive and dangerous equipment, and it was simply evident that those were not times or circumstances for child-like behavior.

My parents were determined that I would go to college.  They didn’t care what I studied but engineering was the obvious choice, a choice that two of my closest high school friends also made.  My father was happy about that, but didn’t understand why I later  wanted to go on to graduate school.  Then, one day he visited my laboratory and saw the the carbon dioxide laser I had built and was studying.  It was based on a long, water cooled,  glass tube.  Gases were mixed and then pumped through the tube and an electric discharge was maintained in the gas mixture.  There were mechanical and optical components all around the tube.  It was a mass of tubing, wiring, and other components.  My father looked at it carefully, listened as I gave a brief explanation, and said, “Gordon, now I understand why you like what you are doing.”  I thank him for helping me get there (and here).

On May 1, I had the opportunity to help unveil an IEEE Milestone recognizing the 1970 demonstration, at Corning, Inc., of the first fiber with a transmission loss of less than 20 dB/km. It was a particular privilege for me, because from 1976 until the 1990s I worked on the development of measurement techniques and standards for fiber at the National Institute of Standards and Technology.

Beginning in 1966, the possibility of using optical fiber for communications was strongly promoted in the United Kingdom by Charles Kao, then of Standard Telecommunications Laboratories, and technologists at the British Post Office.  It was then believed that the essential advance was to reduce the losses in typical fiber from 1000 dB/km or greater, to less than 20 dB/km.  At 20 dB/km, one percent of the light entering a fiber emerges at the end of a 1 km length.  Kao shared the 2009 Nobel Prize in Physics for his early role in the optical communications.

In 1970, Peter Schultz, Robert Maurer, and Donald Keck achieved a loss of 17 dB/km, and the rest, as they say, is history.  Their demonstration showed immediately that optical communications could be practical, but few recognized, or could have recognized, that in a few decades it would change the lives of almost everyone in the world.  Over 1.6 billion km of optical fiber has been installed around the world.  Today, losses in commercial optical fiber are below 0.2 dB/km and in laboratory demonstrations data transmission rates of greater than 100 Tb/s have been achieved. (That’s one hundred  TeraBits of data per second, and one TeraBit is a million million bits of data.)

The top picture shows Corning CTO David Morse, myself, and Peter Schultz just after the unveiling.

For more information, see
Corning’s Press Release
Article from Stuben Courier, Bath, NY
Article from The Leader, Corning, NY
Article from the Star Gazette, Elmira, NY

Governments are stepping up to the challenge of meeting the goals of the UN Secretary-General’s proposed goals of achieving universal access to sustainable energy by 2030.  On April 16, the European Union held its own summit on Sustainable Energy for All, during which European Commission President Jose Manuel Barroso announced the establishment of an “Energizing Development” Initiative.  Barroso said “The Initiative’s ambitious goal is clear: we want to help provide access to sustainable energy services to 500 million people by 2030. This is a huge objective, but if we work together it can be done”  One part of the Initiative is to “create a world-leading Technical Assistance Facility worth 50 million euros, drawing upon EU experts to develop technical expertise in developing countries.” 

Then during the Clean Energy Ministerial meeting in London on April 25-26, several other national commitments were announced:

• “Sixteen governments participating in the Super-efficient Equipment and Appliance Deployment (SEAD) initiative recommitted to working together and with the private sector to accelerate global progress on improving the energy efficiency of equipment and appliances.”
• “The United Kingdom announced the establishment of up to £60 million in new funding to support the demonstration of carbon capture and storage technologies in developing countries.”
• “Denmark, Germany, and Spain released a global renewable resource atlas that maps the potential for solar and wind energy across the world.”
• “Italy and the U.S. announced the launch of Lighting India, which will bring modern lighting services to two million people by the end of 2015.”
• Eleven countries agreed “to bolster the Clean Energy Solutions Center. Launched a year ago at the second CEM, the Solutions Center is a $15 million Internet-based technical assistance project jointly led by Australia and the United States in partnership with UN-Energy.”

These surely are valuable steps forward, but it seems to me that universal access to sustainable energy will be achieved only when the work of nations and NGOs enables and encourages the private sector to address energy access in underserved areas as business opportunities.

The main business at the April 24 meeting of UN Secretary-General Ban’s High-Level Group on Sustainable Energy for All (see post directly below) was the release of its Global Action Agenda, its proposed strategy for achieving, by 2030, the Sustainable Energy for All Initiative’s three goals:

• Ensuring universal access to modern energy services.
• Doubling the global rate of improvement in energy efficiency.
• Doubling the share of renewable energy in the global energy mix.

The report identifies seven “Sectoral Action areas”:

1. Modern cooking appliances and fuels;
2. Distributed electricity solutions;
3. Grid infrastructure and supply efficiency;
4. Large-scale renewable power;
5. Industrial and agricultural processes;
6. Transportation;
7. Buildings and appliances.

It further identifies four “Enabling” Action Areas”:

1. Energy planning and policies;
2. Business model and technology innovation;
3. Finance and risk management;
4. Capacity building and knowledge sharing.

For each Action Area five to ten high impact opportunities are identified with suggested sector leadership — Governments, Donors, Businesses, or Civil Society.

Over 20% of the world’s population (1.4 billion people) still do not have access to electricity and other benefits of technology that became nearly universal in the developed world 50 to 100 years ago.  To address this the UN has declared 2012 to be the “International Year of Sustainable Energy for All,” and UN Secretary General Ban Ki-moon has established a new initiative called “Sustainable Energy for All,” with specific goals for 2030. (see previous post, November 24, 2011, below)

On April 24, four large international engineering societies — IEEE, the Institution of Engineering and Technology (IET), the Institution of Mechanical Engineers (IMechE), and the Institution of Civil Engineers (ICE) — issued a statement supporting  the International Year and the goals of the Secretary-General’s initiative.   These four societies have a total membership exceeding 750,000 individuals in countries around the world.   It is the first time that they have joined their voices to speak out on an important global public policy issue.

The statement was released at a meeting of the High Level Committee of Sustainable Energy for All held in London just before the 3rd Clean Energy Ministerial (CEM3), a meeting of energy ministers from more than 20 countries interested interested in promoting sustainable sources of energy.

I am particularly pleased that we were able to work with these other societies in making this joint statement.  Extending electricity and other benefits of technology to parts of the world where they are not yet available is the unfinished business of my generation of engineers.  By speaking out as a community, I hope that we can nudge the process forward.

I had the privilege of sitting near Ted Koppel at lunch one day last week, just before he spoke to a group in New York City.  For those reading this outside of the United States, Koppel is a famous American journalist, best known as the long-time host of  ABC’s late night news program called Nightline.  When I was introduced to him, he responded, “I’m pleased to meet you.  What’s your favorite joke?”  There was no pause between the sentences.

Unprepared, I chose the safest answer I could think of, “I don’t have one,” to which he said “I knew that would be your answer.  You’re an engineer.”  At that point the woman who had introduced us, the head of a large law firm that represents IEEE, added, “I knew it, too.  My husband is an engineer.”

I really don’t know if there is an occupational connection, but it’s true that I don’t have a repertoire of jokes, no file folder of jokes somewhere in the back of my brain.  I hear them, laugh(sometimes), and forget them.

So if you’re an engineer, let’s hear from you.  Do you remember jokes?  Do you frequently tell jokes?  Please share your perspective and, if you are so inclined, tell a short one in the comments.  Bear in mind that the comments on this blog are moderated.  Only short jokes that the moderator feels are funny and appropriate will make it through.

We knew it was going to happen soon and it did.  At the end of 2011, for the first time ever, there were more IEEE members (50.2%) outside of the United States than within.  The trend shown in the chart to the right is heavily driven by increases in both undergraduate and graduate student membership outside of the US;  these two groups together represent about 25% of total IEEE membership.   About 57% of higher grade members reside in the US.  Total membership at the end of 2011 was 415,989.  In the chart, Regions 1-6 represent the US and Regions 7-10 the rest of the world.

Given the recent world-wide news coverage, one can hardly have missed being reminded that it was a hundred years ago today that the RMS Titanic was lost in the North Atlantic.  About two-thirds (1514) of the 2223 passengers aboard were lost.

There is little new that can be added to the story, though we at IEEE issued a press release a few days ago that highlighted some of the technical developments that were motivated by the loss.

In addition, IEEE members may be interested in reading recent coverage of the disaster in IEEE Spectrum:

• The Titanic Launched a Century of Emergency Response Technologies April 11, 2012
• The Titanic’s Role in Radio Reform April 3, 2012
• Please Rush All Possible Assistance, April, 2012 (print edition)

A search of IEEExplore yields a number of articles about the disaster and the forensic work that followed the location of the wreck in 1985 (Subscription or purchase required):

• The conservation of Titanic artefacts at EDF-Valectra laboratory
• Comparative photometric analysis of structural degradation on the bow of RMS Titanic
• A marine forensic analysis of the RMS TITANIC
• Legal jurisdiction over the Titanic
• The maritime e-Navigation and the Titanic: Are there any links?
• The structural failure of the Titanic
• The RMS Titanic 1985 discovery expedition

The Titanic had the most advanced radio equipment available at the time; without that, it is likely that there would have been few if any survivors.  Had other ships been as well equipped, and had it been the custom of the time to operate shipboard radios around the clock, many more might have been saved.  Robert H. Marriott, the first president of the IRE (one of the predecessor organizations of the IEEE) wrote articles about shipboard wireless in the first two volumes of the Proceedings of the Institute of Radio Engineers, in which he discussed the importance of both shipboard equipment and the training of operators.  These articles are also available on IEEExplore.

• Radio operation by steamship companies, Volume 1, Issue 2, pp. 3-7
• Specifications for steamship radio equipment, Volume 2, Issue 2, pp. 165 – 178

At the end of March, I participated in the Region 8 annual spring meeting in Berlin.  This is the 50th anniversary year for Region 8, which is our largest by geography (130 degrees of latitude and 150 degrees of longitude).  It is our second largest by membership, with over 76,000 members at the end of 2011, about 18% of our total, with a year-to-year growth of 4%.  The UK-RI (which is also celebrating its 50th anniversary this year0, is IEEE’s third largest, and the Germany, Italy, France, Spain, and Benelux sections are also high on the membership list.  Region 8 is also very diverse with many ethnicities and many languages.  It is both wealthy and poor; by GDP per capita, it includes the ten wealthiest and the ten poorest countries; it also includes five of the ten fastest growing economies in the world.

During the meeting I shared IEEE’s commitment to improve its support of members in Region 8, as we work to meet the local needs of members everywhere.  We currently have a particular emphasis on the European Union, within which we have nearly 60,000 members and where we are working to help members engage with the EU government.  We also have a focus on  Africa, where we are working on engineering education with UNESCO and on other initiatives.

During the Region 8 awards banquet, I presented the Region with it’s 50th anniversary banner.  My remarks to the Region 8 Committee are here.

While in Tokyo, I also accepted an invitation from Tomonori AOYAMA, the Chair of the Tokyo Section, to speak to a gathering of young engineers in the Section.  Several old friends from Japan that I hadn’t seen for a long time also showed up, so it was a rewarding event on several fronts.  I urged the young engineers to think about their careers broadly, beyond the details of their current projects or job situations.  I suggested that they think about the nature of engineering, what engineers have accomplished over the past century and what they, as the next generation, will accomplish in the future.  I talked about the importance of energy to our future security, prosperity, and the climate, and highlighted opportunities in health technology, and I told them that my generation of engineers is leaving behind the problem of extending the benefits of technology to the 20% or so of the world that has not yet experienced it.  I suggested that they find a professional society home, such as the IEEE, to provide them with the resources they need to succeed.  The prepared version of my remarks is here.

Dr. Aoyama also asked four young IEEE members to speak:  Yasyharu OHGOE, Assistant Professor at Tokyo Denki University and the Tokyo Section GOLD Chair, Mamiko INAMORI, an Assistant Professor at Keio University and Japan Council Women in Engineering Chair, Keiichi ZENPO, the Chair of the Tokyo Young Researchers Workshop, and Ko KIKUTA, the recent past Chair of the Keio University Student Branch.  The overarching consensus among them was that the principal benefit of IEEE membership is being a part of a supportive community, of belonging.

There are about 14,000 IEEE members in Japan, around 7,800 of them in the Tokyo Section, which is one of IEEE’s largest.