Editorial: The President's Speaker
B.R. McAvoy · IEEE Transactions on Ultrasonics Ferroelectrics and Frequency Control · 1986
The idea for as ingle large plenary session at the beginning of the Ultrasonic Symposium took root about ten years ago. A single session was held in Phoenix in 1977 to enable the Best Paper Award, recognizing meritorious contributions to the TRANSACTIONS, and other business of general nature to take place. The speaker for this session was R.C. Williamson with the topic "Case Studies of Successful Surface-Acoustic-Wave Devices." This format was well received and the ADCOM decided to broaden the areas of interest presented by inviting speakers outside the immediate ultrasonics community. Hence the President's Invited Speaker came into being. The first was E.L. Titlebaum who spoke on "Echolocation Systems in Nature; Bats, Dolphins, and Humans," at the opening of the 1978 Ultrasonics Symposium. We continue this tradition in Williamsburg for the 1986 Symposium with a presentation of The Glorious System of Things-An 18th Century Science Lecture by John L. McKnight and Hans C. von Baeyer who are physics professors at the College of William and Mary in Williamsburg, Virginia. Together they have re-created a lecture such as might have been given in the second half of the 18th century by an itinerant lecturer in the American colonies. The lecture is built around three principal pieces of apparatus, either antique or reconstructed: an electrical machine, an air pump, and an orrery, now respectively known as electrostatic generator, vacuum pump, and mechanical planetarium. With the help of these instruments, and their ancillary apparatus, a dozen instructive and amusing experiments are performed to illustrate the forefront of 18th century physics and astronomy. Engineers and physicists will recognize the seeds of the modem theories and devices they use in their daily work.