A bit of history [IEEE Journal of Oceanic Engineering]

With this issue the IEEE efforts to provide a forum for the electrical engineers who have become very much a part of the oceanic engineering field have passed another milestone. The IEEE Oceanography Committee (OCC), consisting of representatives from seventeen groups and societies, was formed to provide a base from which the IEEE could manage its involvement in the Offshore Technology Conference (OTC) with eight other organizations and to sponsor a new ocean-oriented conference series, the first of which took place at Panama City, FL, in September 1970. The committee has continued to participate in OTC and also continued to sponsor the ocean series conferences which were held successively after Panama City at San Diego, CA (Ocean ´71), Newport, RI (Ocean ´72), Seattle, WA (Ocean ´73), and Halifax, N.S. (Ocean ´74). Ocean ´75 was held in San Diego under the joint sponsorship of both the IEEE and MTT and Ocean ´76 will be held in Washington, DC, also under the same joint sponsorship. It is because of the above series of conferences that this Journal was started. A study by the IEEE/OCC in 1974 determined that many of the authors of papers given in the ocean series conferences felt that they had no appropriate journal to formally publish their work. Thus the OCC undertook to start such a publication. To take on this new responsibility, the OCC, under IEEE bylaws, was organized to become the Council on Oceanic Engineering in 1975 with a membership of 17 G/S and, as such, continues the old OCC activities with the additional responsibility of publishing this Journal. The IEEE Council on Oceanic Engineering sincerely hopes that this Journal will serve a real need in the electrical-oriented oceanic engineering field.