This report has been submitted to the AES Executive Committee. The
previous
(2000-02-10) AESHC project report is available at our website.
The presently active AESHC projects [as numbered in our Guidelines] are as follows:
2 [Serve as a link between recording studios, radio stations, manufacturers, and others who wish to discard old equipment; and museums, libraries, archives, and private collectors who wish to preserve it.]
An Ampex Model 200A tape recorder had been stored in HQ's conference
room. AESHC members determined its owners, packed the recorder for safe
transit, and returned it to them.
3 [Serve as a link between recording studios, radio stations, manufacturers, and others who wish to discard documents relating to the history of audio engineering; and museums, libraries, archives, and private collectors who wish to preserve them.]
The AES itself had a large library of technical journals and books that had been donated to the Society, and had been housed at the Society headquarters in New York.
Irv Joel reports: "I am pleased to announce that after 6 months, and many hours of work, the 3,767 journals, books and magazines have been inventoried and carefully placed in 194 file boxes for shipment to The Library of Congress. It is our understanding that the entire collection will be preserved and used as the backbone for a research library which will be part of a new facility dealing with sound recording.
"The bulk of this collection was donated to AES by Emil Torick who saved it from the Dumpster after CBS Laboratories in Stamford closed.
"My sincere thanks to the AES staff for their help and particularly to Wanda Hernandez who did all of the data base entry work. I was very fortunate to have an extremely dedicated volunteer group who gave many hours of their time inventorying and boxing the collection.
"Thanks to: Jim Anderson, David Baker, Louis Coulborn, Sid Feldman,
Louis Manno, and Robert van der Hilst"
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.]
AESHC member Paul McManus has offered to organize a display of recording
studio equipment from the 1960s, to display at the 2000 LA convention.
This effort is currently in limbo, awaiting word from the convention committee
on the availability of space for the exhibit. [ update 2000-07-19 space
has been made available. jm]
9 [Create and operate two AESHC 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.]
Done; thanks to David Josephson and Howard Sanner.
10 [Create an AESHC web site and an FTP site on which to publish the information compiled in the following sections.]
Done; thanks to David Josephson and Howard Sanner. Please go see our
website at http://aes.org/AESHC . It is also on the main menu of
the AES website, for which we thank Roger Furness.
11 [Create a directory of museums, libraries, archives, and private collections that contain historic audio equipment or documents about the history of audio engineering.]
Many such links are now on the HC website. Links have been updated to
point to the organizations' history pages, as per Roger Furness's suggestion;
added link to the Studer List home page.
12 [Devise a catalog for classifying the inventions and developments made in audio engineering, based on the work of HK Thiele.]
HK Thiele's documents have gone to the TU Berlin, where Prof. Manfred
Krause and his students are organizing them. He reports: "We have tried
to prepare an ACCESS data base for gathering the non-standard data. In
LA we will try to present parts of it via internet. I think that we shall
have some discussions about data structures then."
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 HC webpage now has a link to the description of the oral history project, which in turn has links to the list of completed interviews, the list of recommended interviewees, and the interviews and talks which are available on-line.
Irv Joel has done a number of videotaped oral-history interviews at
the 107th Convention in 1999-09, and is continuing that work. Irv reports:
"To date, we have completed 20 video recorded interviews and have plans
to record 4 on the East coast before September. We have begun work to assemble
a special team to do recordings in the [San Francisco] Bay area. There
are also plans to record 16 to 20 interviews during the 109th convention
in L.A. John Eargle and John Woodgate have agreed to help with this effort
which is formidable but possible. We hope to have 3 interviews edited
to be shown on a rotating basis in the AESHC room during the convention.
14 [Collect, write, publish, and otherwise disseminate accurate historical information about the field of audio engineering.]
Jay McKnight is working with Pat Macdonald, Mark Clark and Ruth Begun, in order to have the AES publish the memoirs of magnetic recording pioneer SJ Begun.
Del Eilers and Bill Lund, of ex-3M Magnetic Tape, are providing us with
historical data on 3M tapes, and we are placing this on the HC website.
Thus far the canonical list of 3M audio tape types and a 3M document on
print through are there, and many, many more documents will be available
eventually.
posted 2000-07-21
