Written by Michael Geselowitz, Senior Director
Since the inception of IEEE in its modern form in 1963, the IEEE History Committee has reported to the IEEE Board of Directors and carried out its mission to preserve and promote the History of IEEE, its members, and their fields of interest. Among its other responsibilities, the History Committee oversees a number of recognition programs, the most important of which is the IEEE Milestones Program. Among the others are several fellowships and prizes, two of which are supported by the IEEE Life Members Fund: The IEEE Life Members’ Fellowship in Electrical History, which supports a year of graduate or early postgraduate writing; and the Bernard S. Finn IEEE History Prize, which is funded jointly with the Society for the History of Technology and recognizes the best paper annually in the history of IEEE’s fields of interest.
The 2025-2026 IEEE Life Member Fellowship winner is Michelle Spektor of MIT, who is working “Making Biometric Citizens: Technology and Power from the British Empire to the Digital Age.”
The 2025 Finn Prize was awarded to Boyd Ruamcharoen of Harvard University for his paper “Tropicalizing the Portable Radio: Electronics and the U.S. Military’s Battle against Fungi in the Pacific War,” Technology and Culture 65(2), April 2024:497-529.
In 1980, a professional staff unit, the IEEE History Center, was created to support the History Committee and, under History Committee strategic guidance, to run specific heritage programs, such as Oral History, the Engineering & Technology History Wiki (ETHW), the IEEE REACH Program (pre-university curricular materials), the IEEE Archives, Outreach & Scholarly Engagement, and, most recently, the IEEE Global Museum.
From the beginning, individual IEEE Life members and the IEEE Life Members Committee have been the staunchest supporters of the History Center’s activities. In 2025, two specific grants were awarded by the Life Member Committee, for Oral History and for the IEEE Global Museum.
The IEEE Oral History Program is a collection of almost 900 interviews of key contributors to IEEE’s fields of interest. Most of these are IEEE Life members. The edited and approved transcripts are posted on the ETHW), and the audio and/or video are preserved for other potential outreach uses. In 2025, Dr. Mary Ann Hellrigel, the manager of the Oral History Program, participated in IEEE Life Members Evolution Conference in Boston in June, presenting a workshop on conducting oral history which included two demonstration interviews. A US$2,000 grant from the IEEE Life Member Fund enabled those interviews to be transcribed.
The IEEE Global Museum promotes an understanding of the impact of IEEE fields of interest upon society through traveling exhibits for IEEE members and the public, from a single treasured artifact to a full collection. In 2025, the first major traveling exhibit (designed for large public museums rather than IEEE conferences), “Unseen Signals: E. Howard Armstrong’s Radio Revolution,” moved from its first venue at the National Museum of Industrial History in Bethlehem, PA, USA, to its second venue at InfoAge Science & History Museums in Wall, NJ, USA, and the second exhibit, “Microchips that Shook the World,” premiered at the Attleboro Area Industrial Museum in Attleboro, MA, USA.
A US$10,000 grant from the IEEE Life Member Fund helped support “Our Mobile World,” an exhibit consisting of two timeline game interactives, six interpretive panels, artifacts, and display hardware that traveled to several IEEE conferences.
As always, the IEEE History Committee and IEEE History Center are grateful for the support of the IEEE Life Members Committee.
