AES
Historical Committee Preliminary Report
for
the Board of Governors Meeting at the
118th
Convention, Barcelona, 2005-06-01
The Historical Committee will hold an open meeting during
this Convention, at an as-yet-undetermined time, to
be chaired by HC Vice Chair Irv Joel, who will attend the Governors'
meeting to answer any questions you may have about the HC activities.
You are all welcome to attend the Historical Committee meeting. We
will
discuss the
activities reported below.
The presently active AES Historical Committee projects
[as
numbered
in our Guidelines]
are as follows:
4 [Collaborate with the AES
Standards
Committee, SC-03 Subcommittee on the Preservation and Restoration of
Audio
Recording, and other AES committees and subcommittees, as appropriate.]
- Because we get inquiries from field users
about how to preserve
their audio records, and
because no other AES group is set up to answer these questions, we have
compiled references to papers and persons who do preservation of audio
records, and organizations willing to answer questions, and posted them
on the HC website at "Practical
Audio Preservation" .
5 [Organize
and maintain an archive relating to the history of the Audio
Engineering
Society itself.]
- Project
leader
Roger Furness had said that he would be able to devote time to organizing
and cataloging the history of the AES
itself. It has not happened yet.
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.]
- There is no plan for a Historical Exhibit
at
the 118th Convention in Barcelona, 2005-05. There will, however, be at
least one historical paper, on the Thiele-Krause Online Archive (see
12, below).
- Planning for a Historical Exhibit at the
119th Convention in New York, 2005-10,
has begun.
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, and the items in 14 (below).
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.]
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.
- Irv Joel plans to record more interviews
during this Convention. 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.]
- At the HC meeting in San Francisco in
2004-10, George Brock-Nannestad presented a preliminary plan for a
project on Audio Patents, to
improve access to patent information regarding early audio. He
has recently updated that plan, and it is posted
here for your information and comment.
- The project for an Ampex
History, with Larry Miller as the project leader, continues.
It will be based on Oral History interviews with 16 Ampex engineers and
managers. The raw video tapes have been run off onto DVDs, and several
sets distributed to early Ampex employees to use as a memory refresher.
John Leslie, an Ampex Engineering Manager in the 1950s, has written a
draft "History of Early
Ampex". This is being circulated for comments, corrections, and
additions.
- Larry Miller is editing the
video tapes of the presentations at the
117th (SF) convention , so that
we can eventually make them available for viewing.
- We are working with AES Webmaster Steve
Johnson to add to the
"Journal Article Search" the ability to search by author's affiliation. So
you will be able to search for all Journal articles and Convention
Papers (Preprints) by authors affiliated with, for instance, Bell
Telephone Laboratories. The data entry for the 10,500 entries is almost
complete (10,000 done so far).
New
items
now on our website include the following:
Jay McKnight, Chair
AES Historical Committee
Draft report written on 2005-05-03, Revised --04,
--06, --09