New Sign at Wal*Mart, courtesy of Gary Smith and Carol Bardia...

Say what you will about W-M, they do seem to have a sense of humor. 
  

Flagstaff Fire: Time-lapse video of wildfire burning west of Boulder #boulderfire #flagstafffire - Boulder Daily Camera

Flagstaff Fire: Time-lapse video of wildfire burning west of Boulder - Boulder Daily Camera:

Flagstaff Fire: Time-lapse video of wildfire burning west of Boulder

Camera staff

Posted:   06/29/2012 10:00:40 AM MDT

Updated:   06/29/2012 10:23:12 AM MDT

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Wondering why Flagstaff fire is still burning in same spot on front of Bear Peak? I think this explains it:

#boulderfire #FlagstaffFire Quote:"I spoke with a person overseeing the fire mitigation for the Flagstaff Fire. Mr Parker and I spoke about the flare-ups and other issues. In the conversation, he pointed out that the firefighters have several aims. One of these is to let the current fire consume fuel for potential future fires. This is akin to a controlled burn, admittedly during a situation that many consider a crisis. Letting wildfires burn up undergrowth, dead trees and some live vegetation as well in order to save us from future problems with fire seems to be part of the strategy, and it makes good sense. Is it a bit scary? As I discussed with Mr Parker, nature can be very scary."

Boulder emergency notification registration link for visitors and residents

"In addition, anyone living or visiting Boulder is encouraged to register their contact information with the city’s Everbridge system at www.boco911alert.com to receive future emergency notifcations. Everbridge allows customers to register up to three phone lines for as many as five addresses so that individuals can create several layers of notification. As of early May, more than 20,400 individuals had registered their phone numbers in the system."

from City of Boulder

NEWS
Wednesday, June 27, 2012
Contact:

Sarah Huntley, Media Relations, 303-441-3155

City lifts pre-evacuation notices for south Boulder

KMGH Live Streaming, fire coverage #boulderfire

KMGH Live Streaming:
http://media.thedenverchannel.com/livestreampage

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Perimeter map of Flagstaff fire near Boulder - Camera #boulderfire

Perimeter map of Flagstaff fire near Boulder - Boulder Daily Camera:

Perimeter map of Flagstaff fire near Boulder

By Dan Schneider and Joe Murphy
The Denver Post

Posted:   06/27/2012 01:42:57 PM MDT

Updated:   06/27/2012 02:30:18 PM MDT

Flagstaff fire perimeter map

This interactive perimeter map of the Flagstaff fire burning west of Boulder shows the overnight fire perimeter as released by Geomac.gov. The fire perimeter was measured Wednesday at 12:14 a.m., when the fire spanned 230 acres.

Map not appearing? View it here

Want to use this map in Google Earth? Download the KML file here

Print   Email    Font ResizeReturn to Top  

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Fire front of bear peak,helicopter

Smoke-enhanced sunset with occasional slurry bomber...

Bison fire behind bear peak #boulderfire

Earlier today, but so far no evac in Table Mesa.
We are fine, hopefully the rain will help more than the lightning hurts...

--
Cheers,
Connie O'Dell

FtCol: 6/26 10-11AM: Dark Secrets of RF Design by Prof. Tom Lee (DARPA, on leave from Stanford) - IEEE SSCS Seminar

Nice networking opp if you are in hardware/related areas.  If you are in Colorado, I may also know of some new openings very soon, please do drop me an email/LinkedIn invite/call...  I do accept all non-spammy LinkedIn invites, BTW.

Cheers, 
Connie L. O'Dell 
Sr. Verification Specialist 
c.odell@co-consulting.net 
303-641-5191 
_____________________________________________ 
CO Consulting - Boulder, CO - http://co-consulting.net

---------- Forwarded message ----------
From: Loke, Alvin <Alvin.Loke@amd.com>
Date: Sat, Jun 23, 2012 at 8:29 AM
Subject: REMINDER: IEEE SSCS Seminar - Dark Secrets of RF Design by Prof. Tom Lee (DARPA, on leave from Stanford)

When: Tuesday, June 26, 2012 10:00 AM-11:00 AM (UTC-07:00) Mountain Time (US & Canada).

Where: AMD Fort Collins (NE corner of Harmony and Ziegler, 3rd floor)

 

Note: The GMT offset above does not reflect daylight saving time adjustments.

 

*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*

 

A friendly reminder…  An event not to be missed!

 

 

This seminar will also be hosted as the inaugural IEEE Solid-State Circuits Society (SSCS) webinar, available exclusively to all SSCS members.  If you wish to attend remotely, please register at http://sscs.ieee.org/upcoming-webinars.html.  You will be prompted for your IEEE login and password, and will receive the remote access information from IEEE.  If you are not yet an IEEE and SSCS member, please consider joining.

 

DETAILS http://ewh.ieee.org/r5/denver/sscs/2012_06_Lee.html

 

RSVP            http://gomartin.net/sscs/2012/rsvp_2012_06_26.htm

 

TITLE           Dark Secrets of RF Design

 

ABSTRACT

RF design remains such a mystery to many engineers that it seems that a pointy hat and arcane incantations are needed to make oscillators oscillate and amplifiers amplify (and not vice-versa). Part of the mystery has to do with the many ways that ever-present parasitics undergo surprising impedance transformations, as well as the sometimes counterintuitive ways that noise manifests itself in both amplifiers and oscillators. This talk will attempt to answer frequently-asked questions about these and other RF-related topics. It is hoped that attendees will ask additional questions that they would like answered

 

BIOGRAPHY OF SPEAKER

Thomas H. Lee received the S.B., S.M. and Sc.D. degrees in electrical engineering, all from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology in 1983, 1985, and 1990, respectively. He joined Analog Devices in 1990 where he was primarily engaged in the design of high-speed clock recovery devices. In 1992, he joined Rambus Inc. in Mountain View, CA where he developed high-speed analog circuitry for 500 megabyte/s CMOS DRAMs. He has also contributed to the development of PLLs in the StrongARM, Alpha, and AMD K6/K7/K8 microprocessors. Since 1994, he has been a Professor of Electrical Engineering at Stanford University where his research focus has been on gigahertz-speed wireline and wireless integrated circuits built in conventional silicon technologies, particularly CMOS. He has twice received the "Best Paper" award at the International Solid-State Circuits Conference, co-authored a "Best Student Paper" at ISSCC, was awarded the Best Paper prize at CICC, and is a Packard Foundation Fellowship recipient.

He served for a decade as an IEEE Distinguished Lecturer of the Solid-State Circuits Society, and has been a DL of the IEEE Microwave Society as well. He holds 57 US patents and authored The Design of CMOS Radio-Frequency Integrated Circuits (now in its second edition), and Planar Microwave Engineering, both with Cambridge University Press. He is a co-author of four additional books on RF circuit design, and also cofounded Matrix Semiconductor (acquired by Sandisk in 2006). He is the founder of ZeroG Wireless. He is currently on leave from Stanford to serve as MTO Director at DARPA. In early April of 2011, he was awarded the Ho-Am Prize in Engineering (colloquially known as the "Korean Nobel").

 

6 Perl File Handle Examples to Open, Read, and Write File - TheGeekStuff

6 Perl File Handle Examples to Open, Read, and Write File:

6 Perl File Handle Examples to Open, Read, and Write File

by BALAKRISHNAN MARIYAPPAN on SEPTEMBER 10, 2010

In this article, let us discuss how to manipulate the file handlers in Perl.

1. Typical Way of Opening a Perl File Handlers

The perl example below opens a file with a bareword. This is a typical perl file open scenario.

#!/usr/bin/perl

open FH,"

Read Operation with Bareword file handle:
#!/usr/bin/perl

open FH,";
print $line;


Write Operation with the Bareword file handle:
#!/usr/bin/perl

open FH,">/tmp/msg";
print FH "Perl - Practical Extraction Report Language\n";


If you want to pass this handler to a perl function, you would use typeglob as shown below.
#!/usr/bin/perl

open FH,";
        print @lines;
}


2. Opening a Perl File Handle reference in Normal Scalar Variable

You can use a scalar variables to store the file handle reference as shown below.
#!/usr/bin/perl

# $log_fh declared to store the file handle.
my $log_fh;
open $log_fh,";
        print @lines;
}


3. Use Perl IO::File to Open a File Handle

IO::File is a perl standard CPAN module which is used for opening a file handle in other colourful conventions. Use cpan command to install perl modules.










#!/usr/bin/perl

use IO::File;

$read_fh = IO::File->new("/tmp/msg",'r');

read_text($read_fh);

sub read_text
{
        local $read_fh = shift;
        my @lines;
        @lines = <$read_fh>;
        print @lines;
}


Following perl code snippet explains perl write operation with IO::File module.
$write_fh = IO::File->new("/tmp/msg",'w');


To open the file handler in append mode, do the following.
$fh = IO::File->new("/tmp/msg",O_WRONLY|O_APPEND);


4. Open Perl File Handler in Both Read and Write mode

When you want to open both in read and write mode, Perl allows you to do it. The below perl mode symbols are used to open the file handle in respective modes.

MODE
DESCRIPTION
+<
READ,WRITE
+>
READ,WRITE,TRUNCATE,CREATE
+>>
READ,WRITE,CREATE,APPEND


Let us write an example perl program to open a sample text file in both read and write mode.
$ cat /tmp/text
one
two
three
four
five


The below code reads first line from the /tmp/text file and immediately does the write operation.
#!/usr/bin/perl
open(FH,"+;
        print $line;
}

sub write_line
{
        local *FH = shift;
        print FH @_;
}

close(FH);


The output of the above code is shown below.
$ perl ./read_and_write.pl
one

$ cat /tmp/text
one
222
three
four
five


Note: Use perl debugger to debug your perl scripts.

5. Open the Standard Input and Standard Output

Perl allows you to open the standard input and standard output with other file handle names.

Perl standard output example:
#!/usr/bin/perl

open(OUT,">-");

print OUT "STDOUT opened with the name as OUT";


Perl standard input example:
#!/usr/bin/perl

open(IN,"-");

print "STDIN opened with the name as IN";

$input = ;


6. Use sysopen() to Open the File

sysopen() function requires three arguments such as file handle, filename and mode.

Read Operation Example:
#!/usr/bin/perl

sysopen(FH,"/tmp/text",O_RDONLY);

$line = ;

print $line;


Write Operation Example :
#!/usr/bin/perl

sysopen(FH,"/tmp/text",O_WRONLY);

print FH "write operation";


Different types of modes are shown in the table below.

MODE
DESCRIPTION
O_RDONLY
READ
O_WRONLY
WRITE
O_RDWR
READ and WRITE
O_CREAT
CREATE
O_APPEND
APPEND
O_TRUNC
TRUNCATE
O_NONBLOCK
NON BLOCK MODE


Note : You would need to have the habit of validating opened file handlers. The most common way of handling the file handler open failure with the die function is shown below.
open(FH,">/tmp/text") or die "Could not open /tmp/text file : $!\n";


If the above code is unable to open the file “/tmp/text”, it returns failure, and die gets executed. And the “$!” Buildin variable contains the reason for open function failure.

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Your Engineering Heritage: Pulse Code Modulation: It all Started 75 Years Ago with Alec Reeves

Your Engineering  Heritage: Pulse Code Modulation: It all Started 75 Years Ago with Alec Reeves:

Pulse Code Modulation: It all Started 75 Years Ago with Alec Reeves

BY JOHN VARDALAS, PH.D., OUTREACH HISTORIAN, IEEE HISTORY CENTER

In 1937, Alec Reeves came up with the idea of Pulse Code Modulation (PCM). At the time, few, if any, took notice of Reeve’s development. Even Reeves was forced to abandon his invention unable to see how it could be implemented with the technology of the day. In 1965, some 28 years later, the Franklin Institute awarded Alec Reeves the Stuart Ballantine Medal for his pioneering work on PCM. Labeling it a “major communications invention”, the Franklin institute’s press release reminded the public that PCM had made it possible for the Mariner IV spacecraft to transmit its wonderful images of Mars back to Earth. But in 1965, the true potential of PCM was still untapped. Today, on the seventy-fifth anniversary of Reeves idea, PCM has become an indispensable element in our modern communications infrastructure and a fundamental enabler of modern popular culture.  For example, PCM has very dramatically transformed the way we record, distribute, and listen to music.

Long Distance Telephony and Noise

Alec Reeves, like other engineers working in telephony, grappled with the problem of the additive nature of noise when a signal underwent multiple amplifications along a long distance line. The development of telephony was a remarkable advance over telegraphy but it also introduced a new challenge. How was one to transmit an analog signal over long distances?  Lee De Forest’s invention of the triode vacuum tube in 1906, which he called the Audion, not only heralded the birth of electronics and the rise of the radio broadcast technology, it also provided telephony with an important tool to expand the range of long distance calls: an amplification device. But each time the telephone signal was amplified, more noise would be introduced. Because of the dot-dash encoding, telegraphy did not suffer from the same problem. A telegraph repeater could easily replicate a weak dot or dash into a fresh one without introducing any noise.  In 1937, Reeve’s had concluded that the best way to overcome the noise issue in long distance telephony was to transmit a digitized version of the analog voice signal.

Alec Reeves was born on 10 March 1902, in Redhill, Surrey, U.K.  Reeves’s father, Edward Ayearst Reeves, had a distinguished career as a geographer. He was noted author on cartography and the Royal Geographical Society’s Surveyor.  In 1918, Alec Reeves went to Imperial College, London, to study engineering.  After graduating in 1921, he did postgraduate study at Imperial College. In 1923, Reeves joined the London Laboratory of International Western Electric, a leading manufacturer of radio and telecommunications equipment.  In 1925, after his firm had been taken over by International Telephone and Telegraph (IT&T), Reeves went to work at IT&T's laboratory in Paris. It was there that Reeves came up, in 1937, with the idea of using a binary representation of sound to overcome the noise issue in long distance analog telephone transmissions. It a sense it was a return to the robustness of telegraphy.

Nearly seventeen years earlier, in 1921, Paul M. Rainey, from Western Electric, had filed a patent for a machine that would send faxes via telegraphy using a PCM-like technique to encode the optical scans of the pages.” An object of this invention,” claimed Rainey in his patent, “is to provide means whereby facsimile pictures, drawings or the like may be transmitted by means of code combinations or permutations of electrical impulses.”  It took five years for the patent to be granted. Perhaps the patent office had difficulty wrapping its mind around the idea. Little is known as to whether Western Electric took the idea seriously and tried to produce a working prototype. Reeve’s knew nothing of Rainey’s PCM technique, which used an opto-mechanical implementation. Besides, Reeves was interested in an entirely different problem: noise in long distance telephony, using purely electronic digital techniques.

The First Disclosure of PCM: Paul M. Rainey, "Facsimile Telegraph System," U.S. Patent 1,608,527. Filed 20 July 1921.Issued 30 November 1926.

In 1938, after obtaining a French patent for his idea, he filed for a U.S. patent in 1939, which was then granted in 1942. His patent’s characterless title, “Electric Signaling System,” stood in sharp contrast to the great import of the patent’s contents.  Many years later, Reeves recalled that, from the beginning, he “realized that it could be the most powerful tool so far against the effects of interference on speech — especially on long routes with many regenerative repeaters, since these devices could easily be designed and spaced so as to make the noise nearly noncumulative.” And yet Reeves walked away from this work.  He realized that the PCM was an idea ahead of its time. The state of electronics at the outbreak of WW II was not up to the task of making PCM a viable commercial solution for telephony. Time would be needed for digital electronic hardware to catch up to the demands required by PCM. Finally, with the outbreak of war, Reeves’s focus shifted to the war effort and radar. He became be the Chief Scientist at Britain’s the Air Ministry Research Establishment, which had been founded by Watson Watt. During this time he also invented “Oboe” a system to for accurate bombing through overcast skies. “Oboe” was used in the large bombing raids over Germany and in the Pacific. Paradoxically, a wartime imperative brought a new impetus to the development of PCM, but this time from a very different need, one that had little to do with long distance telephony and noise.

Making Telephone Calls Secret: Bell Labs and SIGSALY

At the start of WW II, the only available technology for secure voice communication was the A-3 Scrambler system.  U.S. military authorities did not know that the Germans had broken the A-3 Scrambler.  Nevertheless top military officers like General George Marshal did not trust A-3 to securely transmit the most sensitive of information.  Very early on in the war, the U.S. Army asked Bell Labs to come up with a new way of securing voice communications. It soon became apparent that digitizing the analog voice signal would allow one to apply cyphering techniques to the message. With cross-licensing agreements with IT&T, the Bell Labs people turned to Reeves work on PCM. The resulting speech enciphering system, called SYGSALY, became the first working example of PCM technology. Under the cloak of secrecy, Bell Labs made great strides in advancing the state-of-the-art in PCM techniques. By the war's end, several groups  at Bell Labs had worked on PCM.

SIGSALY terminal (1943)Source: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:SIGSALY-1943.jpg

During the 1947-48 period, in numerous articles, the Bell Labs work on PCM finally became public.  H.S. Black and J.O. Edson, who had been key people in Bell’s speech encryption efforts, published their account in the AIEE Transactions. They announced to the world that a “radically new modulation technique for multichannel telephony has been developed which involves the conversion of speech into coded pulses.” They also recognized the importance of Reeves patent. They concluded this important paper with “PCM appears to have exceptional possibilities from the standpoint of freedom from interference especially when applied to systems having many repeaters in tandem, but its full significance in connection with future radio and wire transmission may take some time to reveal.” It is interesting that Black and Edson chose an AIEE and not IRE journal in which to reveal this work to the world.  In 1957, Black went on to win AIEE’s Lamme Medal. In 1948, which, in part, was due to his work in PCM. In 1948, Oliver, Pierce and Shannon published their landmark “The Philosophy of PCM” in the Proceedings of the IRE. Their paper, a rigorous analysis of PCM, confirmed the merits of Reeves original conception.

“PCM offers a greater improvement in signal-to-noise than other systems. By using binary (on-off) PCM, a high-quality signal can be obtained under conditions of noise and interference so bad that it is just possible to recognize the presence of each pulse. Further, by using regenerative repeaters which detect the presence or absence of pulses and then emit reshaped, respaced pulses, the initial signal-to-noise ratio can be maintained through a long chain of repeaters.”

Although they saw equipment for PCM as more complex than other forms of modulation, Oliver, Pierce, and Shannon concluded that “in all, PCM seems ideally suited for multiplex message circuits, where a standard quality and high reliability are required.”

What is striking about these papers, and all the others published by the Bells Labs group during the late 1940s, is the absence of any reference to speech encryption, which had been the driving force for Bell’s entry into PCM. The transition to civilian applications appears to have been seamless.  When it came to it R&D investment in PCM, Bell Labs never took its eye off the company’s central mission, the telephone communications business. Although PCM for civilian uses had gotten off to a good start, progress remained slow.

Reeves observed that PCM had been a child with a long infancy, and that, even in 1965, this technology was still in the adolescent stage. Adequate miniaturization was still holding back its development. But two decades after the invention of the transistor at Bell Labs, semiconductor technology was finally diffusing rapidly through the economy. This accelerated progress was finally providing the hardware needed to make PCM economically viable for the wider civilian market.  Reeves believed that PCM was going to be essential enabler for the information society that was appearing on the horizon. ARPANET, timesharing services, and the rise of cable television pointed to a demand for technology that could move large volumes of information across national and international networks. In 1965, Reeves argued that, by the year 2000, transmitting “moving pictures” would also be an essential part of data networks.  He also felt that the pressures on the transportation infrastructure would further increase the importance of PCM.  In the year 2000 “commuters will refuse to accept the delays and inconveniences that even a moderate journey to and from their place of work would entail. We shall have to transport the brains, the skills of the staff, not their bodies, to their daily jobs, again involving not merely ordinary data !inks but a great many private television channels as well.” Reeves concluded his crystal ball gazing by suggesting that PCM would form the very backbone of the communications systems. He was on the mark with this prediction, but his suggestion of a revolution in commuting patterns may need a few more decades before it comes to pass.

Although PCM had advanced considerably during Reeves’s life time, he never lived to see it outgrow adolescence. Reeves died in 1971.

In 1969, the U.K. issued a 1 shilling stamp to commemorate PCM.

Additional Readings and References

Alec Reeves, “Electric Signaling System”,  U.S. Patent 2,272,070, 3 February 1942.

H.S. Black and J.O. Edson, “Pulse Code Modulation”, AIEE Transactions, Vol. 66 (1947), 895-9

B.M. Oliver, J.R Pierce, and C.E. Shannon, “The Philosophy of PCM”, Proceedings of the I.R.E., November 1948, 1324 – 31.

Alec H. Reeves, “The Past, Present, and Future of PCM”, IEEE Spectrum,  May 1965, 58-63.

F. Maurice Deloraine, “The 25^th Anniversary of pulse code modulation:  Historical Background”,  IEEE Spectrum,  May 1965, 56-57.

For a Alec Reeves’s professional CV go to http://www.quantium.plus.com/ahr/

James E. Brittain, “Electrical Engineering Hall of Fame: Harold S. Black”,Proceedings of the IEEE, Vol. 99, No. 2 (Feb. 2011), 351-3.

other history columns           May 12 Your Engineering Heritage: Titanic, Wireless Communications, and the Popular Delusions of Mass Media Apr 12 Your Engineering Heritage: Inventors' Responses to the Sinking of the RMS Titanic Mar 12 Engineering Hall of Fame: Pavel Nikolayevich Yablochkov Feb 12 Your Engineering Heritage: Early Digital Technology and the Navy Jan 12 Your Engineering Heritage: 2012 — A "Milestone"Year

	Comments on this story may be emailed directly to Today's Engineer or submitted through our online form.

---

John Vardalas, Ph.D., is outreach historian at the IEEE History Center at Rutgers University in New Brunswick, N.J. Visit the IEEE History Center's Web page at:www.ieee.org/organizations/history_center.

Visit the IEEE History Center's Web page at:www.ieee.org/organizations/history_center.

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Your Engineering Heritage: Inventors’ Responses to the Sinking of the RMS Titanic

Your Engineering Heritage: Inventors’ Responses to the Sinking of the RMS Titanic:

Inventors’ Responses to the Sinking of the RMS Titanic

BY ROBERT COLBURN, IEEE HISTORY CENTER STAFF

The sinking on 14-15 April 1912 of the RMS Titanic on her maiden voyage after colliding with an iceberg stunned the world.  Although Titanic was by no means the first ship to be sunk by an iceberg, the appalling loss of life (more than 1500 persons died) captured the world’s attention.  The relatively new technology of radio was brought to public notice—both for its role in summoning rescue ships, and also because radio messages from the rescue ship Carpathia and fromTitanic’s sister ship Olympia were listened to by radio operators on shore and relayed to the newspapers. The Titanic story became one of the first major news stories to unfold via radio.

Perhaps because technology played such important roles, both positive and negative (watertight compartments which failed to save the ship, radio ice warnings and radio distress calls which went unheeded because the nearest ship’s operator had gone off duty) and radio calls which did summon assistance, albeit from the Carpathia which had farther to steam, it is not surprising that a number of inventors responded to the sinking with new technologies of their own.

Five days after Titanic’s sinking, Lewis Fry Richardson—whose researches and experiments were driven by his Quaker beliefs, and who is most famous for his work on the causes and prevention of wars—filed a provisional application for a British patent for an “Apparatus for warning ship of its approach to large objects in fog.”  Three weeks later, Richardson filed a provisional application for the underwater version. Richardson’s device depended on the sending out a beam of sound from a parabolic reflector, and listening for and timing the echoes received back from any large objects—land, icebergs, or other ships. Richardson’s patents did not lead to a working device. Practical problems, such as transmitting a satisfactory sound, and the varying absorption of sound by moisture in the air (fog) made detection of obstacles by sound difficult.  In fact, experiments in 1913 by ships in the newly-formed International Ice Patrol using echoes from their whistles to detect icebergs were inconclusive.

However, Canadian Radio Pioneer Reginald Fessenden, who was most famous for his success in transmitting voice by wireless, was also working on a solution. Like Richardson and many others, Fessenden had been disturbed by the Titanic’ssinking. Within two months of the disaster, Fessenden was at work on applying his high-frequency oscillator—the device which produced the continuous wave which had made his earlier wireless voice transmissions possible—to solving the problems of underwater obstructions. On 29 January 1913, Fessenden applied for a patent on an electromechanical oscillator. Because Fessenden’s oscillator was capable of sending out a signal at a fixed frequency, it was much more suitable for the task.

The Submarine Signal Company of Boston, Massachusetts, U.S.A. (acquired by Raytheon in 1947) offered Fessenden a chance to develop his apparatus. Fessenden experimented with and refined it during 1913. In 1914, a set of circumstances coalesced to provide the means (i.e. ships) that gave him an opportunity to test the device at sea.

Immediately after Titanic’s sinking, two U.S. Navy cruisers, Birmingham andChester had been sent to the Grand Banks region of the North Atlantic for the remainder of the 1912 ice season to track icebergs and send radio warnings of their locations to ships in the region.  For the 1913 ice season, they were needed in the Caribbean and so were replaced by the revenue cutters Miami (later the Tampa) and the Seneca.  This new use for the Revenue Cutter Service saved the service from being disbanded. Its merger with the U.S. Life-Saving Service by act of Congress in 1915 created the U.S. Coast Guard. On 12 November 1913 the first international conference on the Safety of Life at Sea (SOLAS) convened in London. Thirteen nations signed and agree to share the expense of an international ice patrol.

14 April 1914, the two-year anniversary of Titanic’s collision, found Reginald Fessenden aboard the U.S.R.C. Miami at the southeast corner of the Grand Banks—very near where the liner had sunk.

Fessenden’s oscillator was a spectacular success. Captain J. H. Quinan of theMiami reported that Fessenden was able to detect an iceberg at distances of two and a half miles (4 kilometers). Fessenden was also able to use his oscillator to detect the depth of the ocean (confirmed by anchor chain) as 200 feet (61 meters).

Ocean travel had just become far safer, thanks to a radio pioneer who would be remembered primarily for other inventions.  In 1921, Reginald Fessendenhttp://www.ieeeghn.org/wiki/index.php/Reginald_A._Fessenden  was awarded the Institute of Radio Engineers’ Medal of Honor.

other history columns           May 12 Your Engineering Heritage: Titanic, Wireless Communications, and the Popular Delusions of Mass Media Apr 12 Your Engineering Heritage: Inventors' Responses to the Sinking of the RMS Titanic Mar 12 Engineering Hall of Fame: Pavel Nikolayevich Yablochkov Feb 12 Your Engineering Heritage: Early Digital Technology and the Navy Jan 12 Your Engineering Heritage: 2012 — A "Milestone"Year

	Comments on this story may be emailed directly to Today's Engineer or submitted through our online form.

---

Robert Colburn is research coordinator at the IEEE History Center at Rutgers University in New Brunswick, N.J. Visit the IEEE History Center's Web page at:www.ieee.org/organizations/history_center.

Visit the IEEE History Center's Web page at:www.ieee.org/organizations/history_center.

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