The year 2019 will be the 50th anniversary of humans landing on the moon, one of the great engineering achievements of all time. Because many technologies within IEEE’s fields of interest were crucial to this event, IEEE is eager to celebrate this heritage. Particularly, IEEE would like to highlight this as a primarily engineering achievement, and to help promote the role of engineers in this amazing event. While the Apollo program was a U.S. achievement, engineers from elsewhere, notably the then Soviet Union, were heavily involved in early space exploration.
The IEEE History Center is calling for the nomination by Sections and Life Member Affinity Groups of appropriately related technical achievements for the award of IEEE Milestones. It also plans to gather the recollections of engineers involved with early space exploration, either by interviewing them for the IEEE oral history collection, or by encouraging them to post First-Hand Histories on the Engineering & Technology History Wiki (https://ethw.org/Oral-History:Apollo_Project_and_Moon_Landings)
However, the greatest impact that individual Life members can have on this project is to identify engineers involved in early space exploration. If you yourself were involved, or if you know of a friend or colleague who was, please make yourself known to us. The History Center also welcomes inquiries at any time from IEEE Life members about Milestones or any of our other historical activities.
To pursue any of these suggestions, please contact: Robert D. Colburn, Research Coordinator at r.colburn@ieee.org.
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