The presently active AES Historical Committee projects [as numbered in our Guidelines] are as follows:
5 [Create a "History of the AES" subcommittee, to organize and maintain an archive relating to the history of the Audio Engineering Society itself, ...]
Because the HQ facility does not have space to store even the Society's own historical records and the Oral History Project videotapes, Irv Joel is researching rental of an appropriate storage facility in the New York area for this material.
The translation of the Japanese Chapter of the AES "History
of the AES Japan Chapter" is still underway.
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 members under the leadership of Irv Joel organized and presented a very successful -- standing room only -- historical exhibit for the 111th Convention in New York ("When Vinyl Ruled"). Our wesite has several photo reports.
The Historical Committee is presenting an exhibit at the 112th
(Munich) Convention, organized by Ernst Voelker, with historical items
and some historical papers . There will also be an open meeting
of the Committee on Saturday, 2002 May 11, at 10:00 to 12:00, in the exhibit
room. Details online.
You are all invited to attend.
10 [Create an AESHC web site and an FTP site on which to publish the information compiled in the following sections.]
Please see our website . For
the new things, see "What's
New on this Website" .
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 (MK) and his students are organizing them. We are sorry to report the death recently of Heinz Thiele, but the project continues under MK's leadership.
The strategy of making the contents of the archive available to the
AES has been changed somewhat. The huge mass of documents (about 30,000
pages) in paper form cannot be transferred 1:1 in reasonable time. So,
MK has decided to first sample the headings of the documents (together
with an English translation) and the dates of their issue.
The formerly proposed ACCESS data base does not meet the demands of
the internet optimally. A new SQL data base is now under work and MK hopes
that they will be ready to incorporate data in 2002 May or June.
MK has started to transfer the interviews, made by Heinz Thiele and
recorded on cassettes, onto CDs. There exist about 120 of those interviews.
A further step will be the transfer into MP3 versions.
13 [Record oral histories (sound only, sound with video, and/or sound with still photographs) of important figures in the history of audio engineering.]
Two interviews were recorded at the 111th Convention in New York: Manfred Schroeder and Don Keele. One interview with Les Paul was recorded following the 111th Convention, and an interview with Wilma Cozart Fine, (Record Producer and Executive, Mrs. Bob Fine) is planned. Miles Davis in the UK has recorded an interview with Cyril Francis. An interview with John Borwick was scheduled to be done on April 22.
We will be recording interviews at the 112th Convention in Munich. We are still working on the list of interviewees. We will also be videotaping the opening ceremonies, the Heyser lecture and the Historical Committee meeting.
We solicit your suggestions both for interviewers and for further
interviewees, especially for countries outside of the US.
Jay McKnight, Chair
AES Historical Committee
2002-04-30
