Standards and
Recommended Practices
Although the
establishment of standards was a driving force during the early days of
the Society, activity had waned during Eras 2 and 3. The second edition
of the
“Vacuum Hazards Manual”
was finally published in 1979, after many delays
and the “Glossary of Terms” was completed, but there was no new
activity. The existing standards were reprinted by General Electric and
were also available through the Technical Information Center at Oak
Ridge. Until 1981, all new AVS members received a copy of the
standards; after 1981, they could have a copy sent to them on request.
In 1983, these were being mailed by Walt McCain from Detroit at $0.80
per copy because the New York post office charged $1.15!
New procedures for the
Standards Committee were approved in 1981; these outlined the steps to
ensure broad consensus before approval of documentary standards and
recommended practices. However, there was little other activity,
although a workshop on standard leaks was held during the 1981
Symposium; it was organized by Charles Tilford. In 1983, after he
complained to the Board about the lack of significant activity, the
Standards Problems Committee was formed, with Susan Allen as Chair. It reported that the standards
were sorely out of date with the most recent having been issued in 1973.
In fact, at an AVS Board meeting in May, 1984 there was even a sentiment
to abolish the Standards Committee altogether. Fortunately, Don Santeler,
a former President and a spokesman for the vacuum technology segment of
the Society, was attending a concurrent Chapter meeting and, during a
coffee break, gave a most persuasive argument that standards were a very
important activity and that more should be done in this area.
As a consequence of his
advocacy, at the next Board meeting, John Sullivan was asked to chair
the Standards Committee and revitalize its operation He proposed changes in the mode of
operation of the Committee, which were soon published in a Chapters and
Divisions newsletter, soliciting comment. The procedures proposed were
in part a response to the possibility of financial exposure of the
Society as a consequence of promulgating “standards.” The caution was
well founded, since in 1982 the Supreme Court of the United States had
confirmed the imposition of a crushing settlement on the non-profit
American Society of Mechanical Engineers, Inc., in favor of the Hydrolevel Corporation, resulting from the promulgation of a standard by
ASME that was ruled to have unfairly excluded a particular product.
By 1985,
sub-committees were working on standards for “Pump Speed Measurements”,
“Leak Rate Standards” and “Pumping Hazardous Gases”. At a Board meeting
in February 1985, John Sullivan recommended that the name of the
Standards Committee be changed to the Recommended Practices Committee,
and discussed its intended mode of operation. The group would work to
establish a practice, which would then be published in the JVST
as a technical review for the purpose of gathering comments from all
interested parties. After reconciling the published document with any
comments, a final version would be published as an AVS Recommended
Practice. Thereafter, it was hoped to develop a standard, in cooperation
with ANSI. Sub-committees were charged with generating the draft which
would be published in the JVST. The change in the name of the standing
committee required a change in the Constitution , which was approved by
the membership.
In 1986, a round robin
on Calibrated Leaks was started and four practices were being drafted.
Over the next few years there was a lot of activity with occasional
hiccups. Two chairs of sub-committees went into private business in
1987 and had to be replaced because of the Committee’s policy that
proprietors of their own business could not be members of the committee.
The Committee was diligent; the draft of the “Recommended Practice on
Pumping Hazardous Gases” required fifty pages in JVST! In 1990, five
Recommended Practices on totally new topics and eight replacements of
1976 standards were gathered together in a bound volume; all of these
had been published in JVST before completion of the final version. Three
more drafts were still in preparation at that time.
In 1990, Dana
Hanschulz proposed that AVS form a Technical Advisory Group (TAG) to
ANSI. He was concerned that the ISO/TC 112 Committee on Vacuum
Standards, which had been dormant since 1974, but was now active under
Soviet chairmanship, could conclude standards without significant input
from the USA or Europe.
Divisions
Two new
divisions were
formed during this era, bringing the total to seven. The activities of
each division is given in detail separately. In 1984, the first issue of
the Chapters and Divisions Newsletter was distributed to the chairs of
all the Division and Chapter Chairs by the editor, Hugh Garvin. The
objective was to provide better communication of AVS activities and
Board actions, but it did not seem to improve the situation
significantly; it was stopped at the end of 1989.
The Fusion Technology
Division was founded in 1980, due largely to Manfred Kaminsky,
who served as the first chair in 1981 after Don Mattox had been appointed the interim chair in 1980. The
Division serviced a fairly
small, but very active, group of workers in aspects of fusion programs.
The initial membership of 100 grew to 430 in 1981. Plasmas were of
course a topic of interest for both fusion and semiconductor processing
applications and the division members were polled in 1986 to determine
if they would agree to a name change to embrace plasmas which were not
involved in fusion. The proposal for the expansion was initially made by
Fred Dylla, who was chair in 1984 and supported by the 1986 chair, Angus
Hunt who wrote an article in the Newsletter setting out the argument for
the change; plasma-material interactions were very important not only
for fusion reactors (i.e. wall effects) but in accelerator beams,
sputtering, etc. and fusion was too narrow a field to attract many
papers. The change to the Plasma Science and Technology Division (PSTD),
and the new by-laws, was approved by the Division membership and became
official on January 1, 1986. The scope of the Division was expanded to
include general plasma-materials interactions, plasma diagnostics,
plasma-assisted etching and coating, and plasma processing technology.
Robert Langley was the first chair of the expanded division.
In 1985, the LRPC
suggested that a new Division be established based upon the activities
of the E-42 Committee on Surface Analysis of the American Society for
Testing and Materials (ASTM), which, for eight years, had sponsored
joint technical sessions at AVS Symposia. The sessions at the
1984 Symposium in Reno had been very well attended and the LRPC
foresaw a growing field. The by-laws of the new
Applied Surface Science
Division (ASSD) were approved in December 1985.
Cedric Powell played a major role in its formation and was the first
chair.
The VMD had organized
its annual conference, ICMC, for several years but the costs had
increased and its budget reserve in 1988 was only $40,000 whereas the
conference budget was almost $250,000. The Division made a request to
the Board, and received, a loan of $30,000 to provide the cash flow
needed for the conference. VMD reported a $20,000 surplus from the ICMC
in 1989 and, having established a much stronger financial situation, the
loan was returned to AVS in 1990.
Chapters
Several new chapters
were formed during this era but several chapters found it difficult to
maintain programs in the latter half of the decade as industrial
research activity changed and reorganized. This led to the cancellation
of annual symposia and some chapters ceased to operate. In 1980, the
annual symposium of the Pacific Northwest Chapter had to be postponed
for another reason, the eruption of Mt St Helens!
There were
also some administrative changes during this era. In 1982, the
Regional
Area Groups existed only on paper
but had no practical function since the Chapters reported directly to
the Board. When the Uniform Chapter by-laws were revised in 1985, based
on the recently revised New Mexico Chapter By-laws, the RAGs were
deleted. After 1979, there was a one time charge of $10 for an
additional chapter membership rather than an annual dues. In 1984, a
Town Hall meeting was held in Florida to discuss the requirements to
safeguard the Society’s tax-exempt status. Each chapter was invited to
attend and present their financial structure and status; 18 of the 21
attended. A tax lawyer, John Taggart, from Windell, Max, Davis and Ives,
a law firm used by AIP for over 30 years, presented the guidelines. He
recommended that a chapter’s reserve should be 50% of annual expenses
but anything over twice the annual expense should be forwarded to
National. This was certainly not popular with certain chapters, and was
not enforced!
In 1979, the By-laws
of the Greater New York Chapter
were changed to make it a general chapter instead of a chapter of the
Thin Film Division. The new Arizona Chapter
was approved in 1980 as recalled by Bill Kotke. “During the preceding winter, a small group
of people gathered for an evening meeting hosted by Bill Dugger, a long
time sales representative for Varian in the Southwest, with the aim of
generating interest in the formation of an AVS chapter in Arizona. The
AVS Board was contacted regarding our interest in forming a chapter and
a convenient opportunity to present our idea came when the board was
meeting in Albuquerque that spring in conjunction with the New Mexico
Chapter’s annual symposium. Bill Dugger volunteered to appear before
the board, since he would be in attendance at the vendor exhibit
anyway. Bill often recalled how he was grilled by Charlie Duke
regarding the viability of a Chapter in Arizona. Nonetheless, the
Arizona Chapter was born.“ A vacuum technology course by Bill Brunner in
the fall of that year provided income for the organization of the first
annual symposium at the Safari Resort in Scottsdale in the spring of
1981. The timing was chosen to help entice people from colder climates
to attend!. Although the three day long symposium format worked well in
the beginning, it soon became apparent that attendance at such a lengthy
event could not be maintained. Over the years the Chapter’s symposium
evolved into a shorter event. During the late 80s and early 90s there
was heavy involvement from students and faculty at Arizona’s three major
universities (University of Arizona in Tucson, Arizona State University
in Tempe, and Northern Arizona University in Flagstaff).
The
Tennessee Valley
Chapter was formed in 1979 and encompassed Tennessee, Kentucky, Alabama,
Georgia and South Carolina. It was
launched following a petition submitted to the Board by twelve members
located in Oak Ridge, Tennessee. The first organizational meeting was
held on May 9, 1979 with Edward Stickle serving as the first Chair, and
the fledgling chapter’s first dinner meeting was held on June 14 with
the AVS President, C. B. Duke, as the guest speaker. The first election occurred in November of 1979 with Ed Stickle elected
Chair and John Noonan Vice-Chair.
The
Western
Pennsylvania Chapter
was formed in 1987. Jack Singleton recalls that the
initial impetus came from Irwin Richman of
Advent Associates, Ltd. in the spring of 1987. A questionnaire, sent to
the approximately 125 AVS members living in the Western Pennsylvania and
West Virginia area, elicited a typical 20% response, all in favor of
the concept. The petition for the formation of the chapter was
accepted by the AVS Board of Directors in the fall of 1987. Irwin
Richman was the provisional Chair, pending a chapter election. An
inaugural dinner meeting, with Joseph Greene as the speaker, was held on
March 1998, with 39 people in attendance. The Chapter hosted two
further dinner meetings, and a program of three short courses in that
first year. In addition, a one day symposium on “Deposition of Diamond
and Diamond-Like Carbon” was organized at Pennsylvania State University
by Russell Messier and S.V. Chrishnaswamey and attracted about 100
attendees. The chapter was off to a great start. In each of the
following years, through 1997, the Chapter successfully hosted one or
more dinner meetings, and an annual short course offering, plus a number
of one-day symposia and some plant visits.
The
Ohio Chapter was formed in 1980 but the transfer of members left the
Indiana Chapter with only 32 members! Since 1987, the Ohio Chapter was
run as two groups based in Cleveland and Dayton respectively.
The
Texas Chapter was formed in 1981.
In 1983, the ANL/NAL
Chapter was renamed the Illinois Chapter. In 1987, the North Central Chapter was renamed the
Michigan Chapter;
the original name was inappropriate after the formation of the Ohio and
Wisconsin chapters.
In
1985, the Pacific Northwest Chapter
made a donation to the Portland Community College and the chair, Mike
Bayne, presented a plaque to commemorate the event; the college
requested that this be retained by the Chapter.
In March 1986, 40
people attended a Town Hall meeting in San Jose, on the day before a
Board meeting, to discuss Chapter and Division issues. One result was
that the Society booth at the1987 symposium was staffed by
representatives from the Chapters and Divisions, who took short shifts,
in an attempt to encourage interactions with the attendees.
In 1987 The
Northern
California Chapter initiated
an effort to fund a facility at the Valley Campus of Chabot College (now
Las Positas College) in Livermore, to be dedicated to the teaching of
vacuum technology. The chapter initially made a substantial cash
contribution to the fund. By November of that year the fund exceeded its
goal by virtue of a single contribution from the MDC Vacuum Products
Corporation. This left the Chapter free to concentrate its efforts to
equip the new facility. A second initiative of the Chapter was a
long-time commitment to The Exploratorium in San Francisco, for help in
the design and procurement of the exhibits in the areas of interest to
the Society. In 1986 the Northern California Chapter assembled a series
of experiments in vacuum technology for use at the high-school level,
which proved very popular. In 1989, the Chapter offered training to
other chapters in running a business office and organizing one-day
meetings; it would even pay the travel costs to the Bay area! Both the
Rocky Mountain and Mid-Atlantic Chapters were planning to set up
business offices and took up the offer.
The Greater New York Chapter
reported very poor attendance at a number of one-day symposia in 1989
and, as a result, had decided to scale back their meetings. This
corresponded to a change in the industrial landscape in the area;
RCA had closed down and Bell Labs were split up and reorganized.
However, in 1990, the chapter organized a Saturday Science Club, which
was described in a Newsletter article, and the members involved came
from SRI and AT&T, which were formerly RCA and Bell Labs.
In 1990, G. Chen
informed the Board that the Wisconsin Chapter was inactive and should
transfer its remaining funds to AVS. Caroline Aita, who had ended her
term as Chapter Chair in 1986, noted that she had been unable to find a
successor. The Central Indiana Chapter could also not find a volunteer
in 1990.
In 1987, Tim Simpson,
who was involved in videotaping courses, was planning to form an AVS
chapter in Australia but the Board informed him that they would not
recognize a chapter outside North America. In 1988, the LRPC suggested
that student chapters be initiated but it was not until 2002 that these
were approved in the AVS By-laws.
Interactions
Government
Interactions
During this Era, the Society has had
two unfortunate interactions with agencies of the United States
government as a consequence of strained East-West relationships.
A major problem involved the “First
International Conference on Bubble Memory Materials and Process
Technology” in 1980, which was organized by the Society. In February,
1980, and in the March Newsletter, John Vossen reported that the State
and Commerce Departments had raised the issue of foreign national
attendance and he had assured them that AVS would comply with reasonable
rules. However, the guidelines developed by the Commerce, State,
Justice and Energy Departments and Intelligence Committee stated that
individuals and their employers would be held accountable for releasing
information not already in the public domain; their definition of an
“open” meeting was that only material already in the public domain could
be presented. This was detailed in the State Department ITAR regulations
published in the C&E News of January 5, 1981. In the March Newsletter,
John noted that, on the grounds that oral exchanges of sensitive
information constituted proscribed export of technical information, AVS
was ordered to “dis-invite” all registrants from Eastern Europe and
China, which was done but three Chinese registrants had already left.
They were not allowed by the FBI agents in Santa Barbara to attend the
first day of the conference. However, the State Department did not want
to antagonize China and were to be allowed to enter on the second day
but only if they signed a “letter of assurance”. This letter had been
dictated by the Department of Commerce and all non-US citizens had to
sign it; it was an agreement to withhold any information from nationals
of eighteen countries, including China! When it was reported in the
press that the Chinese had signed, the Chinese mission in New York sent
agents to arrest the three Chinese for treason! John informed the
mission that they had not signed the letter!
This affair has been
discussed in
detail by Vossen,
who gives a thorough analysis of the problems involved in the control of
information transfer. This incident was the beginning of a confrontation
between government agencies and the whole scientific community, in which
the government sought to hold the sponsors of conferences responsible
for controlling both the attendance and the content of the papers
presented. In the July, 1981 Newsletter, Ted Madey commented that the ITAR restrictions should permit open technical conferences since the
government’s main concern was the release of detailed manufacturing
information, which was well protected by the industries. However, a SPIE
meeting in August, 1982 was essentially ruined by the forced withdrawal
of about 100 papers because of this issue.
It may now be hard for people to
understand why the US government agencies were so concerned about the
magnetic bubble conference but, at the time, this technology was being
touted as a major breakthrough for computer memory. This is a good
example of the inability of scientists and bureaucrats alike to forecast
how the technology world evolves! Although there was much discussion as
to whether AVS should participate in the Second International Conference
on Bubble Memory Materials and Process Technology in 1981, the Board
agreed to do so; it was attended by 60 people, without incident.
At the 1983 Symposium
in Boston, the Society suffered yet another unwanted interaction with a
government agency. Late on the afternoon of Thursday, November 3, an
East German physicist, Alfred Zehe, was arrested by the FBI on espionage
charges. Zehe, an exchange scholar at the University of Puebla, in
Mexico, was said to have been under surveillance for some time, and was
alleged to be engaging in espionage. Subsequent information suggested
that he was the victim of a “sting” operation, in which a civilian
employee of the U.S. Navy had offered to sell classified information to
German Democratic Republic (i.e. East Germany) embassies, first in
Washington, D.C., and later in Mexico City. Zehe was reportedly asked by
the G.D.R. embassy in Mexico City to evaluate the information as a
technical expert; his presence at the Symposium appeared to be totally
unconnected with the espionage charges. Although Zehe could have been
picked up at any time, the FBI perhaps chose the Symposium as a high
profile site to highlight the dangers of espionage. The fact that local
television cameras were on hand to record the event adds some credence
to this interpretation! Details of a number of somewhat bizarre
incidents surrounding the arrest have been published [Physics Today,
April 1980, p81; Science 222, 904 (1983)]. After the symposium, the FBI
requested a copy of all Symposium registrations but AVS refused. After
the arrest, Zehe was first held without bail for seven months and was
then allowed to remain in an apartment in Boston while awaiting trial.
In 1985, he pleaded guilty to seven counts of espionage and was then
allowed to leave the country without trial. Ed Sickafus recounted the
event in the March 1984 Newsletter and pointed out that the FBI could
have walked into the Symposium and registered like anyone else but
instead, prior to the Symposium, they demanded registrations under false
names at the New York office! Nancy Hammond required that they register
as did all attendees; they paid the registration fee in cash!
Perhaps reflecting
these two incidents, AVS provided $2,000, in 1984, towards a study by
the National Academies of Science and Engineering of “The Impact of
National Security Controls on International Technical Transfer”!
Interactions with
Societies
The main interaction
with other societies in North America of course continued to be with
AIP. The number of AVS representatives on the
AIP Governing Board increased to
three when the membership exceeded 5,000.
There were discussions
with other organizations about cooperating in various ways. Some of
these resulted in sessions at the Symposium or, as at the Symposium in
Atlanta, parallel conferences. In 1981, AVS was a cooperating
organization with SPIE for the International Technical Symposium and
Instrument Display but AVS declined to co-sponsor with SPIE the 3rd
Symposium on Optical Mass Storage in 1984 because it had insufficient
interest for AVS members. In 1986, there was a meeting with SPIE to
discuss restarting some cooperation which had broken off in 1983.
However, in 1986, an offer from SPIE to co-sponsor a “Semiconductors
and Semiconducting Structures” symposium was declined because the
subject was too close to both EMPD interests and the PCSI conference
topics.
In 1986, MRS suggested
cooperation with AVS to provide a national voice on materials. There was
already an association of twenty societies, not including MRS, in the
Federation of Materials Societies (FMS), which was a 501.[c].(3)
organization formed in 1972. In 1990, FMS invited AVS to become a member
and Harland Tompkins represented AVS at the “11th Biennial
Conference on National Materials Policy” organized by FMS. AVS did join
the FMS in Era 4. Another group called “Materials Panel” was organized
by H Kaufman with the intention of influencing government, but AVS chose
not to be involved since this activity was already covered by the FMS.
In 1989, a meeting was also held with the American Chemical Society, the
American Ceramic Society and the Metallurgical Society, to discuss the
formation of an umbrella organization for materials societies. While it
was decided to attend any future meetings, it was clear that this was
not an alternative to AIP membership.
International
Interactions
The main IUVSTA
interaction during this era was the hosting of the IVC and ECOSS with
the Symposium in Baltimore in 1986. As a result of the success of that
joint meeting, AVS made a total payment of over $100,000 to IUVSTA
instead of the $25,000 which had been agreed prior to the meeting; this
larger figure was half of the surplus from the meeting.
AVS members had a
continuing part in the activities of IUVSTA.
Jim Lafferty was President of IUVSTA from 1980-1983 and Ted Madey was
Secretary General from 1986-89, when he was elected to be President for
the 1992-5 triennium, and thus served as President Elect in 1989-92.
Maurice Francombe served as the AVS Councillor from 1977 till he
resigned in 1981 due to commitments at Westinghouse. Len Beavis was
appointed to serve out the remainder of Maurice’s term and then served
two more terms until 1989. When the IUVSTA statutes were altered in 1986
to permit an Alternate Councillor to represent the member society if the
Councillor was unable to attend a meeting, John Thornton was appointed
the Alternate Councillor for 1986-89, but he died in 1987.
AVS took over the
administration of the IUVSTA Medard W Welch Scholarship in 1979 from the
Institute of Physics in Britain. Peter Hobson was appointed
Administrator, with the responsibility of publicizing the scholarship,
vetting the applications and coordinating the selection of the scholar
with the IUVSTA trustees. Bill Westwood took over from Peter in 1986;
the files were moved from the east end to the west end of Ottawa! In
1983, Lyn Provo took over as editor of the IUVSTA Bulletin from the
retiring editor, K. Poulter, and AVS agreed to pay the mailing cost,
which was $2060 per year for the four issues.
A
China/South America
Interactions Committee
was set up in 1980, with Ted Madey as chair, to deal with technical
societies which were not IUVSTA members; this became the
Foreign
Interactions Committee in 1985
and then the International Interactions Committee in 2002, since
“foreign” was considered politically incorrect. Ted Madey recalls that,
in 1980, he spent considerable time putting together a list of members
who spoke Spanish and Portuguese but he got no response when he sent the
list to people in Latin America; he realized that the scientists there
spoke English and wanted to hear the leading scientists, irrespective of
language. When the committee was established, Brazil and Mexico were not
IUVSTA members but the Brazil Vacuum Society (BVS) joined IUVSTA in 1980
and the Mexican Vacuum Society (MVS) in 1986. However, the Committee
continued to deal mainly with these two societies. This has involved
funding the travel of speakers and course instructors to the annual
meetings of both the BVS and the MVS. Talks have been given by a number
of people at many of these meetings and courses have been presented
several times. In 1986, Larry Kazmerski translated his vugraphs into
Portuguese for a course he presented at the BVS conference; he first had
to learn Portuguese! In 1990, the Board voted to support only AVS
members to attend these meetings; the MVS had invited non-AVS members as
speakers and expected AVS to pay their expenses! The MVS were given
permission in 1984 to translate the “Handbook of Vacuum Leak Detection"
into Spanish. In 1987, there was a request from the MVS for used
equipment to be used in universities and Len Brillson undertook to test
whether this was possible with some surplus equipment from Xerox. Even
before the equipment was ready for pick-up by the MVS, he experienced
problems because US universities also wanted it! In fact, IBM had
established a procedure for US universities to bid for used equipment.
The Committee decided that there was no useful role for AVS in equipment
transfers!
An interaction with
China began after a copy of the JVST issue containing the proceedings of
the 1980 Symposium was sent to the Chinese Vacuum Society (CVS). After a
discussion between Ted Madey and the Chinese during the 1981 Symposium,
an exchange of journals was arranged. In 1982, as part of a plan to
encourage vacuum societies in developing countries, the Board agreed to
an expenditure of up to $3,000 to send one or two people to a CVS
meeting in China; it was expected that their institutions would pay some
of the costs. However, the China-Taiwan issue again caused some concern
and it was decided that it was prudent to have discussions with the CVS
before sending anyone to China. After complaining about the mailing
address used by Taiwan authors on their papers, the Chinese authors did
not attend the 1983 Symposium. Their position was that they could not
participate in a meeting in which the addresses suggested the existence
of two Chinas or one China and one Taiwan. In 1985, there was a CVS
request for AVS courses in China but there was no agreement on financial
arrangements. In 1986, the CVS invited AVS to send seven or eight
speakers to a joint symposium in Beijing in September, 1987; their
expenses within China would be paid by the CVS. A “call for papers” in
the Newsletter resulted in twelve speakers being selected; the
President, President-Elect and Meetings Manager also attended. In the
two and a half day “1st Chinese American Symposium on Vacuum
& Surface Science”, eleven AVS and ten Chinese scientists presented
papers; there were 100 Chinese attendees, 40 of them from Beijing. Paul
Holloway recalls being surprised by the interest they showed; one old
lady had traveled by train for 48 hours to attend! The CVS presented a
flower painting on silk and a painting of the Great Wall to Marion
Churchill for her assistance in the organization. In 1988, there was a
proposal for a reciprocal meeting with the CVS, either during the ICMC
or associated with a joint symposium of AVS and the Vacuum Society of
Japan which was to be held in San Jose in March, 1989, along with the
Northern California Chapter meeting. The CVS opted to participate in the
San Jose meeting and AVS provided partial financial support for the
Chinese speakers.
In 1989, there was a
proposal from the USSR for a joint meeting in the same style as the
Chinese interaction. There were actually two organizations in the USSR;
the Soviet National Committee for Vacuum Science and Technology and the
Section of Vacuum Apparatus and Instrument Construction. After a meeting
with these two competing interests, there were no further action! In
1990, Jim Lafferty organized a “People to People” visit to the USSR by a
delegation of 26 AVS members and spouses.
History
The annual
President’s
Address was published in JVST from 1979 to 1981
during the Era and is very useful as a historical record of AVS
activities.
The 30th anniversary of the
Society in 1983 was cause for some celebration and several activities
were planned. One of these was a re-enactment of the Magdeburg
Hemispheres demonstration, and a committee, chaired by Don Meyer, was
set up in 1981 to make the arrangements. Boston’s Museum of Science and
the New England Chapter of the AVS sponsored the
re-enactment. They were
informed that the original hemispheres could not leave the museum in
Germany but that a replica was available. The
replicas were displayed, prior to the Symposium, at Boston's Museum of
Science and also at the Symposium, but they were not used for the
demonstration because of the possibility of damaging them. Mars
Hablanian oversaw the making of a steel
demonstration pair that would withstand the re-enactment which took
place on October 22, 1983, Ted Madey arranged to have the event
recorded on video and the tape of the re-enactment was shown at the
history exhibit during the Symposium. Six horses, three on each side,
failed to separate the hemispheres on the first three attempts but they
were successful on the fourth try. Fred Wehner had viewed a re-enactment
in Magdeburg in 1981; the horses easily pulled the hemispheres apart!
Fred noted that the horses were able to get good traction because sand
had been put down especially for the re-enactment. He concluded that
they did not separate in the original demonstration because the horses
could not get good traction on the cobblestones and he believed that von
Guericke must have taken this into account in staging the demonstration!
Small glass versions of the hemispheres are displayed in the AVS office
in New York. The 1983 re-enactment was described in detail by M. H.
Hablanian and C.H. Hemeon in “Comments about Magdeburg Hemispheres
Reenactment ”[“History of Vacuum Science and Technology”, eds. T.E.
Madey and W.L. Brown (American Institute of Physics, 1984) p. 61-63].
An edited version, by T.E. Madey, provides details of the event.
A unique exhibit
of historic vacuum apparatus, including the replica Magdeburg
hemispheres, was on display, for six weeks prior to the Symposium, in
the Museum of Science in Boston and, during the Symposium, in the
Exhibit area. It included early vacuum pumps and chambers, X-ray tubes,
mass spectrometers, etc.
Some of the items were on loan from the Smithsonian Institution.
Ted Madey also
suggested that interviews with founders of AVS should be recorded on
video tape. Both MRS and AIP already had oral history programs and the
former was supervised by a professor of history! Jim Lafferty took
charge of this project and recorded a number of
interviews
with founders, past Presidents, Award winners, etc.
The History of Vacuum Science and Technology
was published to commemorate the 30th anniversary of AVS; it
was edited by Ted Madey and Bill Brown and contained the text of seven
review talks, which were given at the Boston Symposium, on aspects of
vacuum, photos of the historical equipment exhibit, and a collection of
historical papers, including von Guericke’s account of the Magdeburg
hemispheres experiment, a proposal for high speed transportation through
a pneumatic tube, and a 1962 paper on “Ultrahigh Vacuum” by H.A. Steinhertz and P.A. Redhead.
In 1984, it was
suggested that historical vacuum equipment should be collected for a
possible future museum display. Some artifacts had already been
collected by individual members and Ed Graper undertook to provide
storage space at his facility in Goleta, California. Additional items
were added to the collection in the next few years.
In 1986, Ted Madey purchased, on behalf
of AVS, two historical books by Schotti and Papin.
A Rare Books Committee was then formed to locate and purchase other
books related to vacuum which were of historical interest; it was later
absorbed by the Committee on Vacuum History,
now the History Committee, when it was formed in 1987. In 1990, the Committee initiated planning for
events for the 40th anniversary symposium in Orlando.
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