Edit Proposal: Milestone-Proposal:First Radio Astronomical Observations Using VLBI, 1967

Thank you for proposing a technical achievement for possible recognition as an IEEE Milestone in Electrical Engineering and Computing. Your efforts help preserve the heritage of technology. Detailed information on the Milestone application process may be found at: Milestone Guidelines and How to Propose a Milestone. At least one of the proposer(s) must be an IEEE Member (including Student Member) in good standing.

To the proposer’s knowledge, is this achievement subject to litigation? If the answer is "yes", the proposal cannot proceed further. None Yes No

You must be able to answer "yes" to all of the following questions. If the answer to any of the following questions is "no", the proposal cannot proceed further.

Contact us at ieee-history@ieee.org if you are unable to answer "yes" to all of the following and would still like to proceed.

Is the achievement you are proposing more than 25 years old? None Yes No

Is the achievement you are proposing within IEEE’s designated fields as defined by IEEE Bylaw I-104.11, namely: Engineering, Computer Sciences and Information Technology, Physical Sciences, Biological and Medical Sciences, Mathematics, Technical Communications, Education, Management, and Law and Policy. None Yes No

Did the achievement provide a meaningful benefit for humanity? None Yes No

Was it of at least regional importance? None Yes No

Has an IEEE Organizational Unit agreed to pay for the milestone plaque(s)? None Yes No

Has an IEEE Organizational Unit agreed to arrange the dedication ceremony? None Yes No

Has the IEEE Section in which the milestone is located agreed to take responsibility for the plaque after it is dedicated? None Yes No

Has the owner of the site given permission to place an IEEE plaque? Yes No

Year or range of years in which the achievement occurred:

Title of the proposed milestone. (Include date or date range in title. Example: “Alternating Current Electrification, 1886”)

Please provide a plaque citation in English summarizing the achievement and its significance. Text absolutely limited by plaque dimensions to 70 words; 60 is preferable for aesthetic reasons. NOTE: The IEEE History Committee shall have final determination on the wording of the citation. Names of living persons are not normally used in citations. Exceptions to this are cases where the person's name is linked to the achievement itself (e.g. the Lempel-Ziv algorithm, Maxwell's Equations, etc.) or where the person's name is so widely recognizeable to the general public that it makes sense to use it. When used, the names should be the names of the engineers, scientists, or technologists who actually made the achievement, rather than managers or executives. For more information and suggestions about writing milestone citations, please visit Helpful Hints on Citations, Plaque Locations.

In what IEEE section(s) will the milestone plaque(s) reside?

Please specify the IEEE Organizational Unit(s) which have agreed to sponsor the Milestone, and supply name and contact information for the senior officer from those OU(s). Sponsorship has three aspects: 1) Payment for the cost of the plaque(s), 2) Arranging the dedication ceremony, and 3) agreeing to monitor the plaque and to let IEEE History Center staff know in case the plaque needs to be moved, is no longer secure, etc. Number 3 must be done by the IEEE Section(s) in which the plaque(s) is located, but aspects 1 and 2 can be done by any IEEE Organizational Unit, and they need not be the same one. Please note: your email address and contact information will be masked on the website for privacy reasons. Only IEEE History Center Staff will be able to view the email address.

Street address(es) and GPS coordinates of the intended milestone plaque site(s). Please include coordinates in decimal format rather than degrees.

What is the intended site(s) of the milestone plaque(s) relation to the achievement? The intended site(s) must have a direct connection with the achievement (e.g. where developed, invented, tested, demonstrated, installed, or operated, etc.). A museum where a device or example of the technology is displayed, or the university where the inventor studied, are not, in themselves, sufficient connection for a milestone plaque.

Also, please Describe briefly the intended site(s) of the milestone plaque(s). (e.g. Is it corporate buildings? Historic Site? Residential? Are there other historical markers already at the site?)

Are the original buildings extant?

Please provide the details of the mounting, i.e. on the outside of the building, in the ground floor entrance hall, on a plinth on the grounds, etc.

How is the intended plaque site protected/secured, and in what ways is it accessible to the public? If visitors to the plaque site will need to go through security, or make an appointment, please give details as well as the contact information visitors will need in order to arrange to visit the plaque.

Who is the present owner of the site(s)?

In the space below, please describe in detail:

• the historic significance of the achievement,
• its importance to the evolution of electrical and computer engineering and science,
• its importance to regional/national/international development,
• its benefits to humanity,
• the ways the achievement was a significant advance rather than an incremental

improvement of existing technology.

The material submitted here will constitute the main descriptive article on the ETHW website for readers to learn about the milestone. Space is unlimited, and detail is encouraged. Most milestones require 1000 to 1500 words of support, however there is no word limit. The article should be readable by a wide audience that includes practicing engineers, scholars of history, and the general public. Some examples of the text of good milestone articles are First Radio Astronomical Observations Using Very Long Baseline Interferometry] and G3_Facsimile International Standardization of G3 Facsimile (Do not worry about the formatting of the page, IEEE History Center Staff will do that afterwards.)

What is the historical significance of the work (its technological, scientific, or social importance)?

From its Canadian beginnings, VLBI has become an important technique for both radio astronomy and geodesy. It has been the central theme of over 3,500 papers in the scientific literature over the ten-year period 1999 to 2008, and the flow continues unabated. VLBI provides better angular resolution than any optical telescope and can reveal details within some of the most distant objects detectable. Astronomers use VLBI to provide crucial tests of General Relativity, to demonstrate definitively the existence of black holes in galaxy cores, to test the fundamentals of high energy physics, and to look back to the early Universe. VLBI techniques also permit the position of objects on Earth and in the solar system to be measured with millimetre accuracy with respect to the ultimate reference frame, distant quasars. Such techniques are now routinely used: (1) to precisely track spacecraft on voyages to the planets and (2) to provide the basis for precise geodetic surveying including important studies of the movement of crustal plates, earthquake prediction and Earth rotation. See, for example, J. L. Yen, P. Leone, G. A. Watson, J. K. Zao, J. Popelar, W. T. Petrachenko, G. Feil, W. H. Cannon, P. Mathieu, P. Newby, H. Tan, R. D. Wietfeldt, and J. A. Galt, '

What obstacles (technical, political, geographic) needed to be overcome?

The principal technical challenge was to establish two independent receiver systems with individual clocks and recording devices that were sufficiently stable to maintain coherence over periods of many minutes and sufficiently sensitive to detect the very weak radio astronomical signals. Great ingenuity was applied to operating within a limited budget and adapting existing equipment to the task. For example, the first VLBI observations were collected using surplus video recorders that had been purchased from the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation.

What features set this work apart from similar achievements?

Short-baseline interferometry had been used in radio astronomy for high-resolution imaging since the 1940’s. Cables or (sometimes) radio links were used to connect two or more radio antennas to signal processing equipment. The distance or baseline between pairs of antennas in such interferometers was initially small but gradually became larger over time. It soon became clear that important astrophysical questions could be answered only by building interferometers with baselines greater than any cable or radio link could span. The proposed IEEE Milestone will recognize the first successful radioastronomical observation made using such techniques.

Supporting texts and citations to establish the dates, location, and importance of the achievement. You must supply the texts or excerpts themselves, not just the references. Minimum of five (5), but as many as needed to support the milestone, such as patents, contemporary newspaper articles, journal articles, or chapters in scholarly books. At least one of the references must be from a scholarly book or journal article. 'Scholarly' is defined as peer-reviewed, with references, and published. The full reference, in English, must be uploaded, not just the citation. See below section for details on uploading material to the website. All supporting materials must be in English, or accompanied by an English translation.

Supporting materials (supported formats: GIF, JPEG, PNG, PDF, DOC) which can be made publicly available on the IEEE History Center’s website (i.e. unencumbered by copyright, or with the copyright holder’s permission). All supporting materials must be in English, or if not in English, accompanied by an English translation. You must supply the texts or excerpts themselves, not just the references. Images and photographs are especially appreciated, however, it is necessary that you list the copyright owner for these and obtain the copyright owner’s permission to reuse. For documents that are copyright-encumbered, or which you do not have rights to post, email the documents themselves to ieee-history@ieee.org. Please see the Milestone Program Guidelines for more information.

To add attachments, first upload the file and add by adding the text:

[[Media:(filename)]]

For example, if the file you uploaded was named "Milestone Reference.pdf", include the text:

[[Media:Milestone Reference.pdf]] 

in the appropriate field.

Please email a jpeg or PDF a letter in English, or with English translation, from the site owner(s) giving permission to place IEEE milestone plaque on the property, and a letter (or forwarded email) from the appropriate Section Chair supporting the Milestone application to ieee-history@ieee.org with the subject line "Attention: Milestone Administrator." Note that there are multiple texts of the letter depending on whether an IEEE organizational unit other than the section will be paying for the plaque(s).

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