Abstract Scope |
I owe it to Bill DeLong. In 1978, when he won the nomination to become AWS Vice President, he called me into his office at Teledyne McKay and asked casually if I liked to travel. I had no idea what he was getting me into, but I said, sure. Bill felt he could not effectively do his job as Vice President of McKay and attend to his AWS responsibilities as well. He wanted me to take over his committee assignments, including IIW Commission II. I did. In November, 1978, I accompanied Bill to my first Commission II meeting, in Cambridge, United Kingdom.
Belonging to an organization for forty-three years, one is likely to notice a few changes with time. Among other things, I noticed the following:
• July, 1979, my first Annual Assembly, Bratislava, then Czechoslovakia, a communist country, crossing the Iron Curtain by rail
• I became Acting Chair of Commission II at the 1990 Annual Assembly in Montreal after Chair Frank Coe suffered a heart attack. I was elected Chair in 1992 and served until the Annual Assembly in 2002.
• Two official languages of the IIW since birth became English only in 1994.
• Welding in the World, first published in 1963 in both English and French, became English only in 1994.
• The Secretariat, divided since birth of the IIW in 1948 between The Welding Institute (TWI) in the UK and the Institut de Souidure (IS) in France, merged into a single Secretariat in 1995, hosted by IS.
• Cohabitation in standards writing 2000
• In 2000, Commission II became the first to distribute all documents over the internet.
• Peer review for publication in Welding in the World began in 2008
• Welding in the World achieved Science Citation Index status in 2010
• Fellow award began in 2014
• Secretariat moved to Instituto Italiano della Saldatura, Genoa, Italy in January, 2020 |