Retrospective: The MTT Symposia

A look at the first 25 years of the MTT National Symposium (IMS) written by MWJ founding editor Ted Saad. Copyright 1983 IEEE. Reprinted from IEEE Transactions on Microwave Theory and Techniques, Vol. MTT-31, no. 9, September 1983, The MTT Symposia, Th...

THE FIRST SYMPOSIUM sponsored and financed by, and designated as the Annual Meeting of the Professional Group on Microwave Theory and Techniques of the Institute of Radio Engineers, was held at the Western Union Auditorium in New York City on May 9 and 10, 1957. However, from the formation of the PGMTT in the spring of 1952 to that first official Symposium, several technical meetings sponsored in whole or in part by the PGMTT where held and they should be mentioned for the sake of completeness.

Symposium on Microwave Circuitry,
November 7, 1952

The first technical meeting sponsored by the PGMTT was held in the Western Union Auditorium in New York City, on November 7, 1952. Attendance was 210. The twelve papers presented at the Symposium were later published in the first volume of the PGMTT Transactions in March 1953. The price per copy, to members of the PGMTT, was $1.10.

Among the speakers at that first Symposium were Georges Deschamps of ITT, S. E. Miller of Bell Labs, A. G. Fox of Bell Labs, Herb Engelman of ITT, Henry Riblet of Microwave Development Labs, D. R. Crosby of RCA, and Dave Dettinger of Wheeler Labs. It was an impressive beginning for an organization that had less than 500 dues-paying members. Dues at the time were $2 per year.

Microwave Radio Relay Systems Symposium,
November 5-6, 1953

On November 5th and 6th, 1953, a Symposium was held at the Western Union Auditorium in New York City, co-sponsored by PGMTT, the Communications Systems Group, and the Electron Devices Group of the IRE. Fourteen papers were presented, with the main concentration on Microwave Communications. The charge was $2.00 for advanced registration and $3.00 for registration at the door for IRE members. No record was kept of the number of attendees, but to my recollection there were at least half again as many as had attended the meeting in 1952. The papers were eventually published in each of the three group Transactions. They appeared in the third issue of the MTT Transactions dated April 1954.