AES Historical Committee Report
for the Board of Governors Meeting at the
114th Convention, Amsterdam, 2003-03-26

We do not now have any items that require BOG action.

Irv Joel has accepted the position of Vice Chair of the Historical Committee, and Ted Sheldon has accepted the position of Secretary.

The presently active AES Historical Committee projects [as numbered in our Guidelines] are as follows:

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 Dale Manquen organized and presented a very successful  historical exhibit for the 113th Convention in Los Angeles. Our website has the schedule and the report of the activities, and minutes from the committee meeting.
• The Historical Committee is presenting a Historical Exhibit at this (Amsterdam) Convention, organized by Alex Balster. Details online.
• There will be an open meeting of the Historical Committee on Monday 2003  Mar 24, from 10:00 to 12:00, in a room to be announced. You are all invited to attend the exhibits and the meeting.
• Planning for -When Vinyl Ruled- at the 115th AES Convention, NY, 2003-10

AESHC members under the leadership of David Baker are organizing a historical exhibit for the 115th Convention in New York ("When Vinyl Ruled", building on the exhibits at the 109th, 111th and 113th  Conventions).  Previous presentations have concentrated exclusively on analog recording.  PCM digital recording has now been in use for over 30 years, so this year-s presentation will explore mixing and matching analog and digital technology.  The walls of the room will be lined with displays of appropriate historical gear and photographs.  We will have analog and digital playback systems for a variety of formats so that well-known engineers and producers can play master recordings and discuss how they created them.  We expect that major record companies will once again cooperate in providing copies of master recordings.

10 [Create an AESHC web site and an FTP 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. 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.]

• Project leader Prof. Manfred Krause continues his work, as reported on our website. He tried to implement "mySQL" unsuccessfully, and would like volunteer help. If anyone could help Prof Krause in programming in "mySQL", please contact him directly.

13 [Record oral histories (sound only, sound with video, and/or sound with still photographs) of important figures in the  history of audio engineering.]

Report on Oral History Projects From 2002 October:
• We have conducted 13 new interviews and expect to increase that number during the 114th Convention.
• Published new Recording Guidelines which should clarify our recommend procedures for recording oral history interviews.
• Experimented with low-bit audio-only recordings which will be available on our website shortly.
• Re-oganising and updating our "recorded" and "to be recorded" lists into one master list, which will go on the website soon.
• 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.]

• The pioneering 1934 Bell Tel Labs "Audio Perspective" symposium papers are now available on our website.
• The papers, book, and CD from "A History of Audio Engineering and Magnetic Recording Before 1943" , originally presented at the 94th Convention in Berlin, are now more easily available, with the cooperation of the Journal and Herman Wilms.
• Report on Timeline Projects From 2002 October

There have been numerous suggestions of new topics which should be incorperated into the present timeline. The Project Group have reviewed a number of these proposals but no actions has been taken at this time. Irv will continue our disscussion with Willy Aubert about his massive database.

Jay McKnight, Chair
AES Historical Committee

Report written on  2003-03-11