EIC News

As we approach the start of preparation of the technical program for the 2015 Electrical Insulation Conference to be held in Seattle, Washington, June 8 to 11, 2015, it is worth briefly considering the origins of this conference series and the technological changes that have impacted on our discipline. The very first EIC in 1958 was primarily concerned with practical issues relating to electrical insulation and high-voltage plant. There was a need for this new conference because the pre-existing CEIDP conference series concentrated on blue skies, cutting-edge research, and was not a natural home for the reporting of industrially centered, practical, electrical insulation R & D. The first conference was designed to allow both promotion of new products and developments as well as the presentation of technical papers (T. E. Castaldi and J. Tanaka, "History of the Electrical Insulation Conference," IEEE TDEI, vol. 9, no. 5, pp. 655??665). It clearly was a success; 155 papers were presented and there were 1,100 attendees. By the end of the 1960s there had been nine conferences in the series, and the basic format and conference structure had been established, for many years cosponsored by the National Electrical Manufacturers Association and the IEEE DEIS and from 1969 until 2013 held biennially.