Richard Mumford, European Editor, Microwave Journal

The Seattle weather was unexpectedly great for IMS2013, sunny and clear all week.  The venue was very good but the 2 room setup was far from ideal for the exhibition and some people did not even know there was a second room attached in the back left corner.  So it is not surprising that the traffic in the back room seemed to be a step below that in the front but still respectable. While the attendance did not seem overwhelming, there was some optimistic pockets of activity and many were satisfied with the high quality of the attendees.

History is often shaped by seemingly unlikely and largely unheralded sources and that is certainly the case for Darmstadt University. From the early 1880s this university, in the relatively poor state of the Grand Duchy of Hesse, Germany, played a significant role in the development of electrification, invented the...