Today in History -  May 20, 1899 – the American Physical Society (APS) is founded for the advancement and diffusion of the knowledge of physics. It was originally formed at Columbia University by 36 scientists from 17 institutions who elected Henry Rowland as their first president and A.A. Michelson as the first vice-president. It has since grown to a membership of more than 46,000 and publishes some of the most prestigious physics journals in the world. As the APS has grown, it has become ever more involved in issues of public outreach and education. For more information on educational resources in physics, see the APS Education web pages, search the Engineering Pathway’s educational resources on applied physics, or visit the comPADRE Digital Library for physics and astronomy education, a partnership of the American Association of Physics Teachers, the APS, the American Astronomical Society, the American Institute of Physics, and the Society for Physics Students.

Also on this date in 1790, Charles Lindbergh makes the first solo flight across the Atlantic. For more information, see the Engineering Pathway’s educational resources on the history of flight or view our Aerospace Engineering Education community site.

Today in History – March 13,1970 – PDP-11 minicomputer introduced by DEC (Digital Equipment Corporation) and remained in active production until 1996. It was one of the most popular 16-bit minicomputers ever produced.

PDP-11 and its successor, the VAX-11, lived over almost three decades during the time DEC rose to number two computer manufacturer, and then was purchased by Compaq, who in turn was purchased by HP. The architecture was done by my former CMU student, Harold McFarland. (I was a consultant to DEC while on the CMU faculty 1966-1972). The PDP-11 was known for at least two innovations: the Unibus for interconnecting the computer’s components and the architecture using General Registers. Both concepts were derived while writing the book Computer Structures with Allen Newell.

Andy Knowles was in charge of the group. The marketing ads featured the Unibus, a 56 conductor ribbon cable to which the processor, memories, and various I/O control units attached. The initial ads for the PDP-11 featured the ribbon cable bus and a scissors and the notion that anything could be connected to it – making it ideal as a component of a larger system. This is what DEC said about it: “The PDP-11/20 was the first minicomputer to interface all system elements — processor, memory and peripherals — to a single, bi-directional, asynchronous bus. The UNIBUS enabled fast devices to send, receive or exchange data without intermediate buffering in memory. The PDP-11 became the world’s most successful family of minicomputers.“ The manual has a description in ISP, the language that Allen Newell and I developed to describe computer instruction sets aka instruction set architectures (ISAs).

My web site has several articles and comments that may be of interest on my web site.

1. Bell, C. G., R. Cady, H. McFarland, B. Delagi, J. O’Laughlin, R. Noonan and W. Wulf, “A New Architecture for Mini-Computers — The DEC PDP-11″, Sprint Joint Computer Conference, pp. 657-675 (1970). This is the conference where it was announced.
2. What we learned from the PDP-11, published by myself and Bill Strecker in 1975 just before the VAX project was started. This has become a ‘classic paper’ in architecture that starts with: “There is only one mistake that can be made in a computer design that is difficult to recover from: not providing enough address bits for memory addressing and memory management . The PDP-11 followed the unbroken tradition of nearly every known computer”.
3. Retrospective on the PDP-11 written by Bill Strecker with a retrospective about VAX and Alpha and published in 1995.
4. Bell, C. G., “The Mini and Micro Industries“, Computer (17) no. 10, pp. 14-30 (October 1984) provides an overview of the entire industry that was minicomputers from the beginning until 1984 when workstations and distributed computers and clusters were emerging. It showed that there were about 100 computer companies formed and died.
5. Gordon Bell 3 hour class lecture on the Formation of the Minicomputer Industry from a DEC (Digital Equipment Corporation) Viewpoint, including Bell’s Law of Computer Classes. The talk was given to the History of Computers Seminar at UC Berkeley and included UC San Diego, U of Washington, and Microsoft on October 11, 2006.
6. Bob Supnik has written simulators and papers on the PDP-11, VAX, and Alpha.

Check out the Engineering Pathway’s educational resources on the PDP-11 and history of computing. For more educational resources, see our electrical engineering education, computer science education and computer engineering education community pages. The Engineering Pathway also hosts Engineering Education communities in all ABET-accredited disciplines.

Today in History – January 7, 1913 – William Merriam Burton is awarded the patent for thermal cracking. Cracking is a process where organic molecules and broken down into simpler molecules by breaking carbon-carbon bonds. This process is used to breakdown crude oil into one of its many products. These methods were pioneered in by Benjamin Silliman Jr in 1855. But prior to 1913 one of the most popular ways of turning crude oil into useful products was distillation process which collected different products as they condensed in a distillation tower. While this process worked it produced very little gasoline. Burton new this process wasn’t enough and wanted to improve the process just in case Henry Ford was right about automobiles. After years of testing in the laboratory William Burton developed the process of thermal cracking. In this process elevated temperatures and pressures (over 800C and 700kPa respectively) are used. This in effect doubled the yield from a single barrel of crude oil. In 1913 Burton received US Patent No. 1,049,667 for thermal cracking.

For more information, see the Engineering Pathway’s resources on petroleum refining. For related educational resources, visit the Petroleum Engineering Education disciplinary community.

Have you developed courseware – interactive websites, simulations, tutorials, case studies, software environments or tools – designed to enhance engineering education? We want to see it! Submissions due July 17, 2009.

The Premier Award for Excellence in Engineering Education Courseware, hosted by the Engineering Pathway, is open to a wide range of submissions of high-quality, engaging, non-commercial learning innovations designed to enhance engineering education. Submissions for 2009 are due by July 17, 2009, and the Premier Courseware of 2009 will be announced at the Frontiers In Education Conference to be held October 18-21 in San Antonio, Texas. More details on the Premier Award and current and previous winners can be found on the Engineering Pathway at: http://www.engineeringpathway.org/premier/.

Check out our prior Premier Award winners. The 2008 Premier Award for Excellence in Engineering Education Courseware was awarded to Richard Anderson, Ruth Anderson, Natalie Linnell, Craig Prince and members of the development team from the University of Washington for Classroom Presenter.

Classroom Presenter is a Tablet PC-based interaction system that supports the sharing of digital ink on slides between instructors and students. Classroom Presenter enables the flexible delivery of lecture content and can increase student engagement and understanding of material. When used as a presentation tool, Classroom Presenter allows the integration of digital ink and electronic slides, making it possible to combine the advantages of whiteboard style and slide-based presentation. The ability to link the instructor and student devices, and to send information back and forth provides a mechanism for introducing active learning into the classroom and creates additional feedback channels.

Richard Anderson is a professor of Computer Science and Engineering at the University of Washington and also serves as Associate Chair of educational programs. He won the 2007 UW Faculty Innovator for Teaching Award. Ruth Anderson teaches Computer Science at the University of Washington.  Natalie Linnell and Craig Prince are both PhD students at University of Washington working on educational technology with Richard Anderson.

The Engineering Pathway (www.engineeringpathway.org) is a portal to high-quality teaching and learning resources in applied science and math, engineering, computer science/information technology and engineering technology, for use by K-12 and university educators and students. Engineering Pathway is the engineering education “wing” of the National Science Digital Library (NSDL) at www.nsdl.org.

The Engineering Pathway also hosts Engineering Education communities in all ABET-accredited computing and engineering disciplines as well as emerging new interdisciplinary communities.

Today in history – February 16, 2005 – the Kyoto Protocol of the United Nations Framework on Climate Change goes into effect.

In 1992 the Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC) was adopted in order to meet the looming concerns of global warming. As greenhouse gas levels rose around the world it became clear that countries had to be committed to reducing their greenhouse gas emissions. This commitment came in the form of the Kyoto Protocol. Named after the city it was signed in, Kyoto, Japan, the agreement now has over 174 parties that have ratified the protocol. Of these 36 are have committed to reduce their greenhouse gas levels by at least 5% of the 1990 baseline. These targets must be reached within a five year time frame between 2008 and 2012. One notable exception, is the United States, even though it is a member of the UNFCCC. On February 16th, 2005 the protocol entered into force and will expire in 2012.

The Kyoto Protocol affects almost all the major sectors of the economy and is considered to be the most far-reaching agreement on environment and sustainable development ever adopted. Since its inception many governments have adopted new policies to meet their protocol commitments. And in the future the protocol will act as a framework for any international agreement on climate change. Some doubt the connection between greenhouse gasses and climate change. But, the Fourth Assessment Report on the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, launched this year may have put an end to those doubts.

Also one year ago today (February 16, 2007) presidents from many of the major players in the Kyoto agreement (including the United States) agreed on an outline to the successor to the Kyoto Protocol at the G8+5 Climate Change Dialogue held in Washington DC. One of the major components of this outline is a system of emission caps and carbon emissions trading apply to both industrialized and developing countries. They hope that this could supersede the Kyoto protocol in 2009.

For more information, see the Engineering Pathway’s resources on global warming and sustainable engineering. For related educational resources, visit the Environmental Engineering Education, disciplinary community.

Today in History – January 7, 1913 – William Merriam Burton is awarded the patent for thermal cracking. Cracking is a process where organic molecules and broken down into simpler molecules by breaking carbon-carbon bonds. This process is used to breakdown crude oil into one of its many products. These methods were pioneered in by Benjamin Silliman Jr in 1855. But prior to 1913 one of the most popular ways of turning crude oil into useful products was distillation process which collected different products as they condensed in a distillation tower. While this process worked it produced very little gasoline. Burton new this process wasn’t enough and wanted to improve the process just in case Henry Ford was right about automobiles. After years of testing in the laboratory William Burton developed the process of thermal cracking. In this process elevated temperatures and pressures (over 800C and 700kPa respectively) are used. This in effect doubled the yield from a single barrel of crude oil. In 1913 Burton received US Patent No. 1,049,667 for thermal cracking.

For more information, see the Engineering Pathway’s resources on petroleum refining. For related educational resources, visit the Petroleum Engineering Education disciplinary community.

Today in history – December 11th, 1997 – the Kyoto Protocol to the United Nations Framework on Climate Change was signed.

In 1992 the Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC) was adopted and was a major force in addressing the problem of global warming. As greenhouse gas levels rose around the world it became clear that countries had to be committed to reducing their greenhouse gas emissions. This commitment came in the form of the Kyoto Protocol. Name after the city it was signed in, Kyoto, Japan, the now has over 174 parties that have ratified the protocol. Of these 36 are have committed to reduce their greenhouse gas levels by at least 5% of the 1990 baseline. These targets must be reached within a five year time frame between 2008 and 2012. One notable exception, is United States even though it is a member of the UNFCCC. On February 16th, 2005 the protocol entered into force and will expire in 2012.

The Kyoto Protocol affects almost all the major sectors of the economy and is considered to be the most far-reaching agreement on environment and sustainable development ever adopted. Since its inception many governments have adopted new policies to meet their protocol commitments. And in the future the protocol will act as a framework for any international agreement on climate change. Some doubt the connection between greenhouse gasses and climate change. But, the Fourth Assessment Report on the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, launched this year may have put an end to those doubts.

For more information, see the Engineering Pathway’s resources on global warming. For related educational resources, visit the Environmental Engineering Education, disciplinary community.

Also on this date in 1844, Dr. Horace Wells was the first to receive dental use of nitrous oxide. See related educational resources on anaesthetics or visit the Biomedical Engineering Education, disciplinary community.