Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers
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The Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers or IEEE (pronounced as eye-triple-ee) is an international non-profit, professional organization for the advancement of technology related to electricity. It is the largest technical professional organization in the world (in number of members), with more than 360,000 members in around 175 countries (as of 2005).
IEEE's Constitution defines the purposes of the organization as "scientific and educational, directed toward the advancement of the theory and practice of electrical, electronics, communications and computer engineering, as well as computer science, the allied branches of engineering and the related arts and sciences." In pursuing these goals, the IEEE serves as a major publisher of scientific journals and a conferences organizer. It is also a leading developer of industrial standards in a broad range of disciplines, including electric power and energy, biomedical technology and healthcare, information technology, information assurance, telecommunications, consumer electronics, transportation, aerospace, and nanotechnology. IEEE develops and participates in educational activities such as accreditation of electrical engineering programs in institutes of higher learning.
IEEE produces 30 percent of the world's literature in the electrical and electronics engineering and computer science fields, and has developed more than 900 active industry standards. It also sponsors or cosponsors more than 300 international technical conferences each year. The IEEE consists of 37 societies, organized around specialized technical fields, with more than 300 local organizations that hold regular meetings. The IEEE publishes an extensive range of peer-reviewed journals, and is a major international standards body (nearly 900 active standards with 700 under development).
Most IEEE members are electrical engineers, computer engineers, and computer scientists, but the organization's wide scope of interests has attracted engineers in other disciplines (e.g., mechanical and civil,) as well as biologists, physicists, and mathematicians.
The IEEE is incorporated in the State of New York, United States. It was formed in 1963 by the merger of the Institute of Radio Engineers (IRE, founded 1912) and the American Institute of Electrical Engineers (AIEE, founded 1884). It has a dual complementary regional and technical structure - with organizational units based on geography (e.g., the IEEE Philadelphia Section) and technical focus (e.g., the IEEE Computer Society). It manages a separate organizational unit (IEEE-USA) which recommends policies and implements programs specifically intended to benefit the members, the profession and the public in the United States.
Notable Presidents of IEEE and its founding organizations include Elihu Thomson (AIEE, 1889-1890), Alexander Graham Bell (AIEE, 1891-1892), Charles Proteus Steinmetz (AIEE, 1901-1902), Lee De Forest (IRE, 1930), Frederick E. Terman (IRE, 1941), William R. Hewlett (IRE, 1954), Ernst Weber (IRE, 1959; IEEE, 1963), and Ivan Getting (IEEE, 1978).
The current president of IEEE-USA is Gerard A. Alphonse.
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History
The major interests of the AIEE were wire communications (telegraph and telephony) and light and power systems. The IRE concerned mostly radio engineering, and was formed from two smaller organizations, the Society of Wireless and Telegraph Engineers and the Wireless Institute. With the rise of electronics in the 1930s, electronics engineers usually became members of the IRE, but the applications of electron tube technology became so extensive that the technical boundaries differentiating the IRE and the AIEE became difficult to distinguish. After World War II, the two organizations became increasingly competitive, and in 1961, the leadership of both the IRE and the AIEE resolved to consolidate the two organizations. The two organizations formally merged as the IEEE on January 1, 1963.
Notable IEEE committees and formats
- IEEE 754 floating point arithmetic specifications
- IEEE 802 LAN/MAN
- IEEE 802.11 Wireless Networking
- IEEE 829 Software Test Documentation
- IEEE 896 Futurebus
- IEEE 1003 POSIX
- IEEE 1076 VHDL VHSIC Hardware Description Language
- IEEE 1149.1 JTAG
- IEEE 1275 Open Firmware
- IEEE 1284 Parallel port
- IEEE P1363 Public key cryptography
- IEEE 1394 Serial Bus ("FireWire")
- IEEE 12207 Information Technology
See also
- IEEE Computer Society
- IEEE Microwave Theory and Techniques Society
- Institution of Electrical Engineers (a similar organization in the UK)
Further reading
- IEEE website (http://www.ieee.org/)
- Complete list of IEEE standards (http://info.computer.org/standards/standesc.htm)
- Complete list of IEEE Technical Societies (http://www.ieee.org/organizations/tab/society.html)
- History of the AIEE-IRE merger (http://www.ieee.org/organizations/history_center/oral_histories/oh_merger_menu.html)da:The Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers, Inc.
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