AES Historical Committee Report 2004-11-15

AES Historical Committee Final Report
for the Board of Governors Meeting at the
117th Convention, San Francisco, 2004-11-01

The Historical Committee held an open meeting on Sunday, Oct 31, from 09: to 11:00, with 9 persons in attendance. We discussed the activities reported herein.

The presently active AES Historical Committee projects [as numbered in our Guidelines] are as follows:

5 [Organize and maintain an archive relating to the history of the Audio Engineering Society itself.]

• Project-leader Roger Furness says that he will be able to devote time to organizing and cataloging the history of the AES itself.
• We have posted on our website the available History of the AES, updated from the history written by Don Plunkett.
  

8 [Encourage each Local Section and each Convention Committee to organize an appropriate session on the history of audio  engineering, or a display on an appropriate historical subject. When requested, provide information to help them to do so.]

•  AES HC members under the leadership of Ernst Voelker organized and presented a very successful  historical exhibit for the 116th Convention in Berlin.
  
• The Historical Committee, Bill Wray, project leader,  has organized six historical presentations for this (San Francisco) Convention, including an off-site presentation of "Bay Area Electronic Music Pioneers" organized by Gene Radzic, which had an overflow crowd.
  
• There are as yet no plans for a Historical Exhibit at the 118th Convention in Barcelona, 2005-05. Roger Furness will inquire of the Convention Committee to see if anyone is interested in organizing an exhibit there.
  

9 [Create and operate two AES HC email reflectors: a Steering Committee Reflector for discussions of purely administrative matters of the Committee; and a general Historical Reflector for discussions of actual historical matters.]

• Join our reflector. The email reflector continues on the "recordist.com" server, with thanks to David Josephson.

10 [Create an AES HC web site on which to publish the information compiled in the following sections.]

• We continue to upgrade and add to our website . We have  added many new links. For the new things, see "What's New on this Website"  .

11 [Create a directory of museums, libraries, archives, and private collections that contain historic audio equipment or documents about the history of audio engineering.]

• The project leader,  Myles Cochran Davis, has reviewed and annotated the links on our website, which may be seen here. He will be contacting the museums in order to establish better coordination with the AES HC.
  

12  [Devise a catalog for classifying the inventions and developments made in audio engineering, based on the work of HK Thiele.]

•  Cornelius Bradter and Klaus Hobohm of the TU-Berlin are continuing of the work of Manfred Krause and the Historical Committee, with the new Thiele-Krause-Online-Archive for the history of communication technology. It is a web-based archive independent of physically existing documents. It is based on the Thiele-Archive but is intended to go far beyond it. (The new online-archive should not be confused with the Thiele-Archive, which is the actual documents collected by H.K. Thiele.) The new Thiele-Krause-Online Archive will be an online-platform for historic documents connectedwith audio, video, acoustics, measurement and so on. 

13 [Record oral histories (sound only, sound with video, and/or sound with still photographs) of important figures in the  history of audio engineering.]

• The project continues with more new interviews. A complete list of interviews completed, and their dates, and interviews proposed,  is now available. We have now begun editing some of the interviews into a form that we can make available. We are also transcribing a few of the interviews.  But our emphasis is still on recording new interviews.
  
• We continue to solicit your suggestions both for interviewers and for further interviewees, especially for countries outside of the US.

14  [Collect, write, publish, and otherwise disseminate accurate historical information about the field of audio engineering.]

• A new project for an Ampex History, with Larry Miller as the project leader, has been started. It will be based on Oral History interviews with 16 Ampex engineers and managers. .
  

Jay McKnight, Chair
AES Historical Committee

Draft report written on  2004-10-15;  updated 2004-11-15