NEWS from IEEE COMPUTER SOCIETY
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Washington, D.C. 20036-1992

IEEE COMPUTER SOCIETY CELEBRATES 60 YEARS IN 2006

WASHINGTON – In 2006, the IEEE Computer Society celebrates the birth of the computer and the society’s 60th anniversary as the world’s leading association for computing professionals.

The IEEE Computer Society traces its origins back to the 1946 formation of the Subcommittee on Large-Scale Computers of the American Institute of Electrical Engineers, one of the two IEEE predecessor societies, and now the IEEE Computer Society. That same year saw the invention of the ENIAC, the first general-purpose electronic digital computer.

The IEEE Computer Society is marking these events by running monthly articles on the history of computing in Computer magazine; awarding the "Technology of the Decade Award" at a joint meeting of the society's Board of Governors and the IEEE Education Society's board on 30 October in San Diego, and holding a 60th Anniversary History Competition for undergraduate students who design and build a Web site on the history of computing.

Information on the history competition, with a first-place prize of $10,000, can be found at http://computer.org/education/chc60.  Information about the “Technology of the Decade” Award can be found at http://computer.org/awards.

Further, IEEE Region 9 chapters will celebrate the anniversary in conjunction with the 2006 IFIP World Computer Congress in Santiago, Chile, on 20-25 August. More information is available at http://www.ifip.or.at/.

60th anniversary events will be posted throughout the year at
http://computer.org/60thAnniversary.

To read the January 2006 "Computer" article about the ENIAC, go to:
http://www.computer.org/portal/site/computer/menuitem.5d61c1d591162e4b0ef1bd108bcd45f3/index.jsp?&pName=computer_level1_article&TheCat=1001&path=computer/homepage/0106&file=time.xml&xsl=article.xsl&

The IEEE Computer Society is the world's leading association of computing professionals with nearly 100,000 members in over 140 countries. It is also the largest society within the IEEE, which is the world's largest technical professional organization.