Milestone-Proposal talk:Mechanicville Hydroelectric Facility

Advocates and reviewers will post their comments below. In addition, any IEEE member can sign in with their ETHW login (different from IEEE Single Sign On) and comment on the milestone proposal's accuracy or completeness as a form of public review.

Advocates’ Checklist

Is the proposal for an achievement rather than for a person? If the citation includes a person's name, have the proposers provided the required justification for inclusion of the person's name?
Was the proposed achievement a significant advance rather than an incremental improvement to an existing technology?
Were there prior or contemporary achievements of a similar nature? If so, have they been properly considered in the background information and in the citation?
Has the achievement truly led to a functioning, useful, or marketable technology?
Is the proposal adequately supported by significant references (minimum of five) such as patents, contemporary newspaper articles, journal articles, or citations to pages in scholarly books? At least one of the references should be from a peer-reviewed scholarly book or journal article. The full text of the material, not just the references, shall be present. If the supporting texts are copyright-encumbered and cannot be posted on the ETHW for intellectual property reasons, the proposers shall email a copy to the History Center so that it can be forwarded to the Advocate. If the Advocate does not consider the supporting references sufficient, the Advocate may ask the proposer(s) for additional ones.
Are the scholarly references sufficiently recent?
Does the proposed citation explain why the achievement was successful and impactful?
Does the proposed citation include important technical aspects of the achievement?
Is the proposed citation readable and understandable by the general public?
Will the citation be read correctly in the future by only using past tense? Does the citation wording avoid statements that read accurately only at the time that the proposal is written?
Does the proposed plaque site fulfill the requirements?
Is the proposal quality comparable to that of IEEE publications?
Are any scientific and technical units correct (e.g., km, mm, hertz, etc.)? Are acronyms correct and properly upper-cased or lower-cased? Are the letters in any acronym explained in the title or the citation?
Are date formats correct as specified in Section 6 of Milestones Program Guidelines? Helpful Hints on Citations, plaque locations
Do the year(s) appearing in the citation fall within the range of the year(s) included at the end of the title?
Note that it is the Advocate's responsibility to confirm that the independent reviewers have no conflict of interest (e.g., that they do not work for a company or a team involved in the achievement being proposed, that they have not published with the proposer(s), and have not worked on a project related to the funding of the achievement). An example of a way to check for this would be to search reviewers' publications on IEEE Xplore.

Reviewers’ Checklist

Is suggested wording of the Plaque Citation accurate?
Is evidence presented in the proposal of sufficient substance and accuracy to support the Plaque Citation?
Does proposed milestone represent a significant technical achievement?
Were there similar or competing achievements? If so, have the proposers adequately described these and their relationship to the achievement being proposed?
Have proposers shown a clear benefit to humanity?

In answering the questions above, the History Committee asks that reviewers apply a similar level of rigor to that used to peer-review an article, or evaluate a research proposal. Some elaboration is desirable. Of course the Committee would welcome any additional observations that you may have regarding this proposal.

Submission and Approval Log

Submitted date:
Advocate approval date:
History Committee approval date:
Board of Directors approval date:

Status of Mechanicville milestone proposal -- Krein (talk) 21:23, 10 November 2022 (UTC)

Please note that the proposal has not yet been submitted formally, and the team needs to complete the information (including uploading many of the references they mention in the National Historic Site application).

As the application mentions, Mechanicville is an example of the "flurry" of hydro projects that started soon after the Niagara success. Since "IEEE Milestones recognize innovation and excellence in unique products, services, seminal papers and patents," the most interesting aspect is that the plant is still operational. In many ways, its initial design and operation were not unique and instead are representative of many early generation facilities.

The "IEEE SPECIAL CITATION IN HISTORY" program, although most commonly used for museums and similar sites that preserve knowledge and heritage, specifically mentions "historic sites engaged in the preservation of technical history for their achievement in preserving the history of significant technical achievements in all areas associated with IEEE." I would point out that the Mechanicville site is an excellent example of an important historic site that is actively preserving -- in working form -- early hydro power as a major technical achievement. The proposers might wish to consider this aspect when finalizing the application.