[HN Gopher] List of IEEE Milestones
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List of IEEE Milestones
Author : agomez314
Score : 56 points
Date : 2021-10-20 11:08 UTC (11 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (ethw.org)
(TXT) w3m dump (ethw.org)
| onionisafruit wrote:
| I was surprised to see Ben Franklin as the first milestone. As an
| American I knew of the famous kite flying story, but I assumed he
| was merely a wealthy hobbyist. I didn't realize his experiments
| were important enough to be considered a milestone much less the
| first milestone.
| not2b wrote:
| Franklin was first to propose a way of proving that lightning
| was an electrical phenomenon. It was actually Thomas-Francois
| Dalibard who was first to run the experiment (a month before
| the famous kite experiment by Franklin), but Dalibard based his
| version of the experiment on a proposal by Franklin, so
| Franklin is properly credited.
| dec0dedab0de wrote:
| I thought this was common knowledge, but now I'm thinking it is
| because I grew up near Philadelphia and have been to the
| Franklin institute many times.
| JoeDaDude wrote:
| Also recommended: A visit to the Benjamin Franklin Museum in
| Philadelphia where they have reproductions of equipment
| Benjamin used to experiment (end to entertain guests) with
| electricity, such as a Leyden jar and voltaic cells.
|
| https://www.nps.gov/inde/planyourvisit/benjaminfranklinmuseu.
| ..
| JoeDaDude wrote:
| Dagnab it! No Philadelphian has posted a selfie with the
| Benjamin Franklin milestone. Must remedy that situation...
|
| http://ethw.org/Milestones:Milestones_selfies
| yitchelle wrote:
| I also agree that it is strange as I would have thought human
| triggered electrical events would have been conducted much
| before Ben Franklin's.
| adrian_b wrote:
| The experiments of Franklin are an important milestone, but
| they should have not been the first.
|
| The first milestone should have been the invention of the
| electrostatic generator (first in 1663 by Otto von Guericke,
| then several improved types during the next century).
|
| The availability of the electrostatic generators was the event
| that started the rapid evolution of the science and technology
| of electricity and magnetism.
|
| Until the electrostatic generators, during 2 millennia, the
| knowledge about electricity and magnetism consisted just in
| being aware of the same 5 phenomena that were well known to the
| Ancient Greeks, i.e. the attractive properties of magnetite,
| amber and tourmaline (which is pyroelectric), and the stunning
| effects of electric fishes (2 were known in antiquity: torpedo
| and electric catfish) and of the lightnings.
|
| After the appearance of the electrostatic generators, doing
| electric experiments became a fashionable activity for many
| educated people and there was an avalanche of discoveries that
| advanced very quickly the science of electricity.
|
| After the invention of the electrostatic generators the most
| important milestone was one present in the IEEE list, the
| invention of the electric battery by Volta.
|
| The experiments with electrostatic generators were limited by
| the impossibility of providing continuous electrical currents.
|
| That became possible with the Volta battery, which started the
| second avalanche of discoveries, including such important
| things like the connections between electricity and magnetism.
|
| While the experiments of Franklin were indeed a milestone,
| especially because of his definitions of the positive and
| negative electricities, without electrostatic generators he
| would have never done any experiments.
| [deleted]
| rta5 wrote:
| Is it correct to interpret this as the IEEE not recognizing any
| milestones since 1994? They have a list of items being
| considered, but such a large gap makes me think the milestones
| program is one of IEEEs low priority, nearly forgotten
| activities.
| Jtsummers wrote:
| > 4) The achievement must be more than 25 years old.
|
| From the guidelines on milestones, linked near the top of the
| page. Given that, it's at most behind by 2 years now.
| VLM wrote:
| The milestones switch from journal articles to corporate press
| releases at some point.
|
| They miss the vibrant and interesting marketplace technology
| transitions.
|
| I can think of several marketplace transitions that were never
| journal articles nor corporate press releases:
|
| The conversion of home/personal sized computers from linear power
| supplies to switchers.
|
| The widespread eventual total conversion of home appliance-type
| wall warts from transformer based linear supplies to switchers.
|
| The conversion of radar from multi-KW pulsed magnetron to multi-
| watt solid state doppler.
|
| "Successful" deployment of multiple trunking-style public safety
| radio networks.
|
| Generally speaking the widespread conversion of personal
| electronic appliances from vacuum tube to transistor
|
| The personal appliance transition from barrier-strip and point-
| to-point wiring technologies to PCB
|
| The two marketplace transitions from memory limited sprite based
| video displays in the 6502 era to early VGA era simple large
| memory backed bitmaps back to very complicated parallelized 3d
| accelerated video cards.
|
| The gradual marketplace conversion from simple voice phone in-
| band signaling to computerized out of band signaling from the 70s
| thru 90s. And I suppose the later marketplace conversion to voip.
|
| The marketplace conversion from computer full control front
| panels pre 1980 to various post 1980 mass storage bootstrap
| systems still used today.
|
| The marketplace era of closed source compilers, IDEs, languages,
| etc. There was a day back when you'd have to pay $5000 to compile
| Fortran and you liked it. Now the idea of paying anything for a
| compiler looks weird to most devs.
|
| The marketplace conversion from 4:3 squarish video to widescreen
| and the GUI designs that still haven't caught on to wide-screen-
| ness in the 2020s...
| bradhe wrote:
| Weird that there hasn't been a "milestone" in 15 years. What do
| you think that means?
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(page generated 2021-10-20 23:01 UTC)