Forever young
Happy birthday to us. With this issue Electronic Products begins its Golden Anniversary year. We're 50, and while a mature magazine can suffer the pains of aging the same way humans do (a recent study found that 62% of 50- to 64-year-olds have at least one chronic health condition, with high blood pressure, arthritis, and high cholesterol topping the list), I'm delighted to report that Electronic Products is in robust health, with revenue up in both our print and online editions, a noteworthy achievement in the no-holds-barred world of EOEM trade publications.
It's been said that the past “is a foreign country: they do things differently there.” Close your eyes for a moment and drift back to 1957. If you try you can almost hear the rockin' sounds of Elvis on the radio�he had five number one hits on the Billboard charts that year. Dwight D. Eisenhower is serving his second term as President of the United States, and in July the International Atomic Energy Agency is established (and Eisenhower soon thereafter announces a two-year ban on nuclear testing). In October Orval Faubus, governor of Arkansas, calls out the U.S. National Guard to prevent black students from enrolling in Little Rock's Central High School.
While we are inclined to think of today's technology in terms of nano-this and miniature that, the late '50s are best remembered as the era of big things, as in big cars and big plans for exploring outer space. But in the fall of 1957, the U.S. had to come to grips with the shock of Russia's Sputnik I and Sputnik II orbiting the Earth. Not only was the successful launching by the Russians of an Earth satellite a major engineering triumph, it triggered the space race and the nuclear arms delivery race as well.
In the 1950s the cost of a single transistor was counted in dollars. By comparison, today ICs carry up to 1 million transistors per square millimeter and the cost per transistor has sunk to an infinitesimal fraction of a cent; basically 1 with a bunch of zeroes in front of it. In 1957 Japan's forward-looking Akio Morita and Masaru Ibuka had just bought rights to the transistor from General Electric and they introduced a pocket-sized transistor radio. The following year the two would rename their company “Sony.”
Fast forward to the present. To mark our Golden Anniversary, later this year we will reprint a series of classic articles in EP on our Web site, lingering longer on the early decades than on more recent times to better illustrate the technological changes that have occurred. Beyond this, however, you'll not find a lot of reminiscing in the pages of EP, in part because we don't believe in self-aggrandizement and also because despite this brief traipse down memory lane I tend to subscribe more to the forward-looking philosophy best expressed by Leroy “Satchel” Paige: “Don't look back, something might be gaining on you.” Paige, who pitched professionally in a career that spanned five decades, took the mound for the last time to throw three shutout innings for the Kansas City Athletics when he was said to be 60 years old.
Looking ahead, let me give you a brief glimpse into one of the new things you'll see this year from your favorite product and product technology publication. Soon we plan to link our online content to social networks such as digg and del.icio.us and provide easy connection to useful blogs and other new media resources.
Engineers who count their experience in decades might not be up to speed on the latest trends in social content Web sites, Everything on digg.com, for example, is submitted by the digg user community. After you submit content, other digg users read your submission and if the story you submit receives enough diggs, it is promoted to the front page for the millions of digg visitors to see.
del.icio.us.com is a social bookmarking Web site, which means it is designed to allow you to store and share bookmarks on the Web, instead of inside your browser. The advantage here is the ability to get to your bookmarks from anywhere, no matter whether you're at home, at work, or on a friend's computer. What is more, you can share your bookmarks publicly, so your co-workers and managers can view them for reference.
We don't know with certainty that social content networks will work as well for the engineering community as they do for the online public as a whole. But certainty here is irrelevant. Magazines by their very nature must be fluid, continuous works in progress, and in striving to serve you better it is our job to use all available tools if there is a measurable chance that they help us keep our promise to you: to make Electronic Products the one and only place you need to go for information on electronic components and where to get them.
Murray Slovick, Editorial Director
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