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Document #30
Report of the
Historical Committee
to the July 2003 meeting of the ARRL Board
The Historical Committee met via teleconference on April 22nd.
Inventory and preservation
Perry Williams, W1UED, continues to work on the inventory of the 100+ file cabinets originally stored in the 3rd floor of the Newington building. The job is proving to be more time-consuming than had originally been anticipated, but the content is rich and we will be able to make good use of the material for research and display.
A few donations of archival material and hardware came in during the past six months. Of note are documents related to the shut down of Amateur Radio in World War II and some early copies of QST and other technical publications. We have received three boxes of paperwork associated with Art Gentry, W6MEP, a broadcast professional who lived in Southern California who built the first repeater in the mid-1950s. His engineering work led to a number of innovative ideas and designs that were incorporated into Amateur and commercial repeater systems. The hardware from that first repeater still exists and we expect to receive it as a future donation. It may offer an opportunity for a historical display and QST article.
Some preliminary discussions have started on a possible significant donation of archival material covering Amateur Radio and ARRL history.
Contact with other groups and organizations
After some initial contact with HP Maxim II by Jim Maxwell, Tom Frenaye visited his house in southern Connecticut earlier this year to view copies of HPM's original engineering notebooks, and possibly make copies of them for the ARRL historical collection. It turns out the material in the notebooks had more to do with HPM's automotive experimentation than anything else. The notebooks with radio experimentation were apparently donated to the MIT library many years ago.
The Historical Committee really misses the expert advice and knowledge of committee member Jim Maxwell, W6CF, who became a Silent Key earlier this year.
Historical Committee:
Tom Frenaye, K1KI,
chairman
Al Cohen, W1FXQ
Charles Griffen, W1GYR
Jim McCobb, W1LLU
Les Shattucl, K4NK
16 July 2003
ARRL HISTORICAL COMMITTEE -- 4/22/2003 8pm EST
Teleconference notes
Present:
Tom Frenaye, K1KI, Jim McCobb, W1LLU, Charles Griffen, W1GYR, Joe Carcia, NJ1Q,
Mary Hobart, K1MMH and Perry Williams, W1UED.
Les Shattuck, K4NK, and Al Cohen, W1FXQ, were unable to be present
because of schedule conflicts.
1.
Meeting started at 8:04PM EST via the ARRL conference
bridge. Perry Williams mentioned the
recent passing of former W1AW operator Chuck Bender, W1WPR.
2.
We briefly discussed the issue of how we might decide which
items to keep and which to reject when someone offers something historical to
the ARRL. Items of particular interest
are those related to ARRL history as well as books and magazines about Amateur
Radio. Items like QSL collections were
generally not wanted and people could be pointed towards the QSL museums in
Austria as one potential place to receive them. Old QSTs might be of interest, but we'll have a clearer view when
our inventory is completed.
3.
Mary Hobart mentioned she had a few inquiries from people
who might want to sell equipment or estates.
Our previous policy has been to accept donations where the content seems
complimentary to what we already have, but that we do not do any valuations.
4.
That discussion led into the general topic of how we decide
what to accept and what not to. In the
past much of the expertise came from Jim Maxwell, with his vast knowledge,
particularly of archival material. Perry
Williams suggested that the Historical Committee as a group could perform that
function. Tom Frenaye suggested that it
would be better to have a group comprised of some Newington employees and some
committee members. That would help to
build some ties and interest within the HQ staff. Jim McCobb pointed out that there are often people who are
"document people" and people who are "equipment people" and usually not
both. Perry Williams noted that
description fit him well as a document person only. A similar division was noted in people who know the ARRL history
and people who are experts in Amateur Radio equipment. Tom Frenaye said he'd talk with Mark Wilson
and Dave Sumner about the issue of staff involvement and see if they might have
some suggestions.
5.
The group discussed ideas on how the current historical
function might be expanded in the future.
The inventory process is going fairly slowly so far and it will be quite
a few months before that work is complete.
On the other hand, further progress depends somewhat on having a pretty
good handle on what we currently have.
We talked about a future full-time director who might be funded by
grants, sales and the ARRL Foundation.
One of our needs will be to be able to utilize and manage outside resources. An archive or museum is likely to attract
some volunteer help (as it has already) but it will become a more important job
as the project continues.
6. Mary Hobart then spoke about plans for a June fund raising test mailing to about 10,000 random members to gauge the level of support for historical preservation. Last year a fund raising effort raised $40,000 to support W1AW activities. We talked about some of the things that might be enabled by having additional funding -- inventory/cataloguing, HQ lobby update, on-line exhibit, conservation/preservation of existing documents and equipment, future research archive and/or museum, a timeline of Amateur Radio inventions and historical events. We also discussed the goal of having some (QST, web, etc) articles about the historical items in the ARRL collection.
7. The teleconference ended at about 9:49 PM EST.
