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gar

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120714-2030 EDT

The IEEE was formed on 1 January 1963 as a merger of the IRE and the AIEE. The field was much simpler then. There are about 9400 current members of IEEE that were members of one or both of the founding organizations, or joined IEEE during the first year. An interesting statistic.

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120714-2144 EDT

Some searching brought forth this earlier history intermixed into the present. It is long.
Do a Google search for
HISTORICAL OVERVIEW PREPARED BY THE IEEE HISTORY

The Google search with this string brings up other important sites.

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120716-1022 EDT

ron:

From Wiki
It has more than 400,000 members in more than 160 countries, about 51.4% of whom reside in the United States
Click to expand...
In 1963 the majority of members would have been from the US.

From http://www.ieee.org/about/ieee_history.html
At its formation, the IEEE had 150,000 members, 140,000 of whom were in the United States.
Click to expand...

Thus, a little less than 10% of the founding members of IEEE have been and still are members.

Looking further back I worked in a group headed by Charlie Thomas at Ford. At that time I did not realize his connection with Lee De Forest. Thomas had been a development engineer for De Forest before he joined Ford. Lee De Forest was one of the founders of the IRE. Was Thomas also a founding member I do not know. De Forest was the inventor of the triode vacuum tube, but apparently did not fully understand its operation.

Some discussion on Ford, radio, and Thomas can be found in Chapter 8, Wireless Telegraphy, at http://books.google.com/books?id=_6...epage&q=charlie thomas radio deforest&f=false
from this entry point you have to page up to the start of the chapter. Also mentioned in this chapter is Bill Gassett the father of one of my classmates.

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