Submitted by the

American Institute of Chemical Engineers & the AIChE Foundation

American Society of Civil Engineers

American Society of Mechanical Engineers

Stephen Smith
American Institute of Chemical Engineers
345 East 47th Street
New York, NY 10017
Phone: 212-705-7335
Fax: 212-705-7812
e-mail: steps@aiche.org

Marla Berman
American Society of Civil Engineers
1801 Alexander Bell Drive
Reston, VA 20191
Phone: 703-295-6076
Fax: 703-295-6132
e-mail: mberman@asce.org

Thomas Perry
American Society of Mechanical Engineers
345 East 47th Street
New York, NY 10017
Phone: 212-705-7234
Fax: 212-705-7143
e-mail: perryt@asme.org

Since the early 1960s, there have been more advances in engineering and technology than in any previous period in recorded history. Each major breakthrough in engineering has represented not just a significant contribution to our technology base, but also to human welfare. Many of these engineering achievements, however, remain poorly documented. In order to ensure the continued development and appropriate use of technology, we must understand the nature of these advances and how they came about.

Three leading engineering organizations, the American Institute of Chemical Engineers, the American Society of Civil Engineers, and the American Society of Mechanical Engineers, have formed a consortium to pilot the use of the World Wide Web to locate, create, preserve, and expand access to historical documentation of engineering and technology.

These organizations share an excitement about the potential of Internet technologies to vastly expand access to primary sources of information"historic, scientific, and technical. At the same time, the fact that Internet technologies are "democratizing the creation of such source materials adds a new dimension to them. This proposal uses grassroot strengths, while still providing valuable critical review"if not the traditional peer review for which engineering and scientific societies are noted. The project is, indeed, experimental and, if the experiment succeeds, could provide a model not just for the creation of Web sites to gather historical information, but for other information gathering activities in which professional societies engage.

For selected research topics of manageable size, but high importance, pioneers will be urged to submit personal recollections, documents or pointers to collections of documents, and comments on materials submitted by others. The material will be gathered in databases using off-the-shelf software and through discussion forums and other appropriate mechanisms. The final reports, along with those from projects underway at the American Institute of Physics, the American Geophysical Union, and the American Meteorological Society, will help show other engineering and scientific organizations how to establish low-cost mechanisms for gathering historical information that, otherwise, might be lost.

It is becoming increasingly difficult to maintain a complete record of the progress of engineering and technology. A large fraction of the engineering knowledge that society now shares was developed in the recent past, which calls for a corresponding exponential increase in historical documentation. That documentation includes the preservation of source materials required to understand the processes of modern technological advances. Historians and archivists are making vigorous documentation efforts, but funding for this work hasn,t increased over the past generation; thus, decade by decade, a smaller fraction of work has been documented in even the most superficial manner. In many fields, there is limited information that gives an incomplete, and sometimes distorted, view of how the technological advance really transpired. One way to meet this challenge is to develop innovative methods using the technology that engineers themselves have adopted.

We propose a pilot project using sites on the World Wide Web to gather historical source materials. The Internet is becoming the preferred method for researchers to store and exchange information"not just in the academic community, but increasingly in industry as well. Web sites offer the most flexible and appealing way to use the Internet. A Web site dedicated to a particular technological development of the recent past could become a magnet attracting engineers and others involved in these developments to submit previously unpublished documentation, including grant proposals, reports, correspondence, autobiographical reminiscences, historical narratives, photographs, commentary on the materials previously submitted"information and analysis in any form. To explore this novel approach to documentation we propose to launch a cohort of independent sites that address significant developments in the last 35 years in major engineering disciplines.

The sites will be constructed under the aegis of leading engineering organizations, namely the American Institute of Chemical Engineers (AIChE), the American Society of Civil Engineers (ASCE), and the American Society of Mechanical Engineers (ASME). Web sites for historical documentation will require not only technical expertise, but a commitment to permanent accessibility of the structured information (transported to whatever future formats evolve). Each of the three organizations already has dynamic Web sites and Web servers which contain valuable technical information and publications, as they continue to build their digital archives. While new Web sites can be easily lost amid the chaotic growth of the medium, all three organizations have mechanisms for reaching the relevant populations of engineers, along with well-established mechanisms (developed for their print publications) to certify the validity of their sites as reliable repositories for particular types of information.

Each of the three organizations will develop the informational content of its Web sites independently. However, we will share the most time-consuming and expensive task, the development of a common Web site "look and feel" as well as common database software. A major part of our effort in the first year will be geared toward writing specifications, selecting from the basic packages commercially available, and obtaining programming specific to our applications. Throughout this and subsequent work, the staffs will keep in close contact to learn from each other,s experience. Our normal modes of communication are e-mail, fax, and telephone, but each organization has offices in the both the New York and Washington, DC, areas and staff can easily meet. To facilitate communication, we will schedule formal half-day, quarterly meetings.

Specific features of our plan are imposed by Internet technology itself. The open nature of the Internet will attract participation from lower-level but important members of engineering teams, such as graduate students and technicians. Thus, the prototype sites will not only include traditional materials but also other documentation not previously preserved. Additionally, the interactive nature of the Internet will allow a body of commentary to grow even while data-gathering is underway, giving a more complete overview, as well as additional perspectives to these histories of technology. In some cases, our Web sites may stimulate engineers to negotiate a consensus history; in other cases, they may expose a range of views and interpretive conflicts that otherwise might have been hidden from historians.

Web site growth may also be influenced by questions posted by historians, educators, students, technology policy-makers, journalists and others who discover the sites while they are under construction. Questions and comments from such outsiders can further stimulate engineers to create commentary and analysis and to excavate source documents and memories. Thus, there will necessarily be some integration of the preservation of historical source materials with historical discussion and analysis of the materials by both participants and scholars, along with limited public dissemination. The nature of the Internet will thus push the project toward a new mode of conducting historical work, more flexible than the traditional academic model of gathering materials, subsequently writing scholarly papers, and hoping someone else will eventually, after strict peer-review, bring the information to a broader public.

For this project, we have chosen topics that can produce results for each Web site on a limited budget and schedule. The selected topics cover a substantial but not overwhelming scope, engage different points of view but are not highly visible nor extremely controversial in the public sense, are not current (since we need the benefit of hindsight) but do not stretch so far back in time that most participants are not Internet users. Each prototype will aim to attract an already existing research community and rouse its enthusiasm for participation. Provocative materials will be posted initially, including extracts of oral histories or written reminiscences, preliminary historical essays or timelines, draft bibliographies, original documents, etc. Further submissions will then be solicited, including both original materials and commentary.

The aim will always be to expand documentation rather than providing final answers. Initially, anyone will be able to post materials, questions, and comments"provided they are signed. We will, of course, reserve the right to delete or bar materials that are obscene, clearly unrelated, ad hominem attacks, slanderous or libelous statements, and others that might create excessive "flame wars. This does not mean, in any way, that we will shy away from controversy and lively dialogue.

We will rely upon existing software to limit the effort required for software development, and will use "off-the-shelf systems with proven reliability in serving the societies and the engineering community. These might include Microsoft software, since many members are familiar with these products from their work and home computing.

Our chief goals can be achieved using software already in use and well understood by Internet users"on-line discussions, FTP transfer and data entry forms. Several engineering societies currently use such software for routine functions, such as the submission of abstracts and papers for conferences.

For each society, the initial interface viewed by the public will be a Web site describing the project and the topics being addressed by that organization. This opening page will also list the topics of the other societies, sites and provide links to them. Following a link from each main topic on this opening page will take a viewer to a subsequent Web page for that main topic, where there will be a list of subtopics as well as an entry point to a threaded discussion. Under each subtopic will be a list of relevant document titles. Clicking on a document title will pull up a "card" for that document (analogous to a library catalog card but actually a record in a database). The card will list relevant bibliographic information for the document, an abstract of what it contains, and "pointers" to the document. These pointers will include information on where the hard copy original is located and, where possible, live links to an electronic version, which might reside on this site or at a remote location.

Participants will be encouraged to add personal accounts to the threaded discussions, which may or may not relate to the documents referenced. The discussion will be considered an integral component of the site, but the volume and significance of the other material will make it clear to visitors that these sites are much more than "chat rooms. Users will be encouraged to refer explicitly to documents as well as to add their remembrances, commentary, and analysis to these threaded discussions.

The site will contain information about how to add documents to the collection. This will involve having an individual with material relevant to the topic fill out a "card" for the document (using an interactive form into which the bibliographic data, abstract/description, and "pointer" information will be entered). If the document exists only in hard copy, the entry might end at this point and the card will simply serve as a resource, pointing to the existence of an archive item. If the document exists in electronic form, the pointer could either provide a URL to the electronic posting or the document could be uploaded to an FTP site so that the pointer could be made a link to the document on the host site (the instructions will include information on how to FTP to the host site).

If project staff determine that the community would benefit from seeing a particular document that was initially listed as being in hard copy only, staff at the host site will send the holder a request that it be scanned and uploaded. If that cannot be done"and we anticipate some engineers will only offer paper copies"staff will accept these and scan them (either as images or using OCR and transcription) and post them. This option will be used sparingly to keep staff involvement and overall costs low. Electronic documents uploaded to the site will not undergo extensive mark-up, but will be marked up (in HTML) to the minimum level to allow functional viewing of their contents.

Staff will also provide road maps in the form of indices, tables, and hyperlinks, including links among the separate sites and links between and among documents and discussion threads; this too will be done sparingly, for we expect most users will be sophisticated enough to find what they seek with minimal guidance.

The collection of "cards" holding the information on the documents listed at a given site represents a database of the materials collected, and this information will be held in some form of database structure using off-the-shelf software. All fields of the record represented by each card will be searchable through a standard search engine, implemented with the Web site, to allow users to easily find materials on the topics and subtopics covered by the site.

One important aspect of this initiative will be addressing a variety of novel problems, including dealing with "broken links" to documents on sites whose URLs have undergone changes, and resolving permissions and copyright issues surrounding documents so the sites are fully compliant with the law. Identifying such problems and exploring solutions is one of the project,s goals.

The project will conclude with final evaluation reports. The chief outcome will be a body of experience on how to construct successful sites. Each site will be judged successful if it attracts a substantial body of historical source materials, helps ensure the preservation of documentation that might otherwise be lost, and otherwise shows promise of providing future engineers, historians, and others with usable historical accounts of the particular topic.

It will be particularly important to determine whether further sites can and should be launched to document other topics. If the sites prove successful, there is every reason to expect that other engineering communities will be stimulated to document their own histories. Such volunteer effort could lead to a permanent habit, led by the disciplinary societies and other engineering organizations, of documenting the history of their fields.

Evaluation will be overseen principally by committees of engineers and historians: the New Technology Task Force and the History of Chemical Engineering programming group of AIChE, the History and Heritage Committee of ASME, and the Committee on the History and Heritage of American Civil Engineering and the Technical Council on Computer Practice of ASCE. Each will be asked to closely review their discipline specific Web sites, and to review more generally the sites related to the other disciplines, so they can compare and contrast, from different perspectives, the problems encountered and the successes and failures of the particular approaches taken. These volunteer groups, evaluations will be on-going and will be used to make modifications within the context of this proposal. They will also be instrumental in the overall evaluation of the projects at the conclusion of the program and for making recommendations with regard to future efforts in this area.

The American Institute of Chemical Engineers (AIChE) was founded in 1908 to "promote excellence in the development and practice of chemical engineering. In the intervening years, AIChE has grown from 19 to more than 56,000 members and the Institute's mission has also expanded. In addition to promoting excellence in chemical engineering education and global practice, AIChE now stimulates collaborative efforts among industry, universities, government and professional societies; facilitates public understanding of technical issues; and upholds professional ethics and standards.

What has AIChE done to achieve this mission? As far back as 1908, in the interest of promoting professional excellence, the Institute released its first publication. Over the years, the Institute's publishing program has grown to include practical, industrially-oriented magazines, like Chemical Engineering Progress; the premier record of chemical engineering research and development, the AIChE Journal; a wide range of books; and new electronic offerings, from software to on-line data and information.

Like other engineering societies, AIChE sponsors major meetings each year that cover the breadth of the profession. It also offers a number of smaller, topical conferences. Each year AIChE also offers more than 200 continuing education programs that provide more than 3,000 chemical engineers, technicians, and other chemical industry employees with tools and information to get their jobs done.

In its public outreach programs, AIChE has long emphasized collaborative efforts, taking leadership roles in events like National Engineers Week and in organizations such as the American Association of Engineering Societies and the Chemical Heritage Foundation, which archives publications, oral histories and other materials that document the history of chemical science and technology.

AIChE employs a staff of 110 and Executive Director Glenn E. Taylor, former vice president for joint ventures and manufacturing services with Engelhard, is the chief executive officer. AIChE is governed by a Council of 17 officers and directors elected by the members. Council oversees a network of groups that address the specific needs of the profession. These include 106 local sections in the United States, plus another 4 abroad. There are also 13 divisions focused on areas in which chemical engineers work, ranging from traditional fields, such as fuels and petrochemicals, management, safety and health, and the environment, to emerging areas like advanced materials, food and pharmaceutical processing, and biotechnology. These groups provide the grassroots strength that can help generate buy-in, interest, and enthusiastic participation in this experiment in creating Web-based histories. They will be an integral part of our promotional efforts, along with direct mail, house advertising, editorial coverage in publications, blast e-mail to targeted lists, etc.

Volunteer leaders from the Executive Committee and the History Committee participated in the selection of the two priority topics. These offer not only an opportunity to engage individuals from a very wide cross-section of the chemical engineering community in a common effort, but also fill the critical need to develop efficient and effective methods of collecting information on the enormous advances since the 1960s for the fields served by chemical engineers.

While celebrating these accomplishments and a proud history, AIChE and its members strongly believe in looking forward. The explosive changes in information and communications technology offer a particularly exciting array of opportunities and challenges. And, projects, like the one proposed here, are key to achieving the Institute,s vision, mission, and objectives, as outlined in AIChE,s strategic plan.

Unlike mechanical engineers, who work with things, and civil engineers, who plan and carry out public works, chemical engineers, who take discoveries from the laboratory to large-scale manufacture, work on processes. These processes are often invisible to the public, although they make the products consumers take for granted possible. Therefore, these projects will, in many cases, bring attention to innovations that are hidden keys to the quality of life.

For the projects, summaries of three to ten pages will be prepared by the project,s lead historian for each subtopic. These summaries will be the seed material for the site and provide guidance for its development. They will help to maximize the historical value of acquired material, while still emphasizing the desirability of obtaining the views of a broad range of participants of all levels.

AIChE Project 1: Development of Process Simulation Software

Most chemical processes are inherently complex. Raw materials and intermediate and final products are handled in a variety of unit operations (reactors, distillation columns, and so on), under different conditions of temperature and pressure. Often, some streams are then recycled.

Given these variables, developing process designs that optimize economic, environmental and safety performance has always been one of chemical engineering,s greatest challenges.

In the 1960s, Project Aspen at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology pioneered the use of computer modeling of such chemical processes. But, the development of tools that adequately model the complexity of plants has required decades. Today, thanks to the progress in the development of modeling software and computer hardware during the 1960s through the early 1990s, simulation of complex processes has revolutionized the way in which process plants are designed and operated. And, this progress has spawned a huge new industry, and companies such as Aspen Technology, Simulation Science, and Hyprotech.

Many of the pioneers of process simulation software are still alive and constitute a group that is surely computer and Internet friendly, which will be key to documenting this important history on-line. Additionally, computer scientists and engineers from other disciplines may contribute to discussions of subtopics dealing with the related evolution of hardware and software.

AIChE Project 2: POP!"Changes in Beverage Containers, 1965 - 1990

POP! is our acronym for the progress on polymers that revolutionized the ways in which soda and other beverages have been packaged and delivered to the public over the last 30 years.

In 1967, a character in the movie The Graduate uttered an immortal line to a newly graduated student played by Dustin Hoffman, "Just one word, Ben"plastics. While sometimes derided then and now, plastics and the advances made in their variety, strength, and impermeability (for carbonated beverages) meant big changes. Plastics have transformed many products and industries, from toys, recordings, exercise equipment, and clothing, to entertainment, aerospace, and automobiles. But, perhaps, nowhere have these changes been as noticeable to most people as they have been in the ways in which beverages are packaged"with breakable, heavy glass giving way, beginning in the 1960s, to a variety of polymers.

The widespread use of polyethylene terephthalate (PET) in clear soda bottles, of high density polyethylene (HDPE) in milk jugs, and of low density polyethylene (LDPE) in containers for honey and other liquids are just a few examples of the innovations which transformed American life.

We will, of course, build histories of the development, manufacture and improvement of these polymers, working in cooperation with appropriate chemical and beverage companies and associations. But there is another aspect of this beverage container history which will be a major, important subtopic. As late as 1985, not many people believed plastics were recyclable. In fact, bottle deposits in nine states were the only source of return of polyethylene terephthalate, and there were only three commercial reclaimers. The changes seen on this score from 1985 to 1990 will also be documented.

Founded in 1852, the American Society of Civil Engineers (ASCE) represents more than 120,000 civil engineers worldwide, and is America's oldest national engineering society. The mission of ASCE is to "advance professional knowledge and improve the practice of civil engineering as:

- the lead professional organization serving civil engineers and those in related disciplines;

- the focal point for development and transfer of research results, and technical, policy, and managerial information; and

- the catalyst for effective and efficient service through cooperation with other engineering and related organizations.

A 28-member Board of Direction governs the Society. The Executive Director is James E. Davis, P.E., F.ASCE. Locally, the Society comprises 17 District and Regional Councils, 4 Younger Member Councils, 78 U.S. Sections, 145 U.S. Branches, 8 International Sections, 224 Student Chapters and 25 Student Clubs. More than 9,200 civil engineers serve on more than 530 national committees that produce the Society's annual convention, specialty conferences, publications, policies, and codes and standards for design and construction. To ensure safer buildings, water systems and other civil engineering works, ASCE develops technical codes and standards that often are adopted by federal, state, and local governments. For example, ASCE's national standard for building loads (ASCE 7) is part of the three major US model codes. The US Department of Housing and Urban Development references the wind load portion as a national standard requiring mobile homes to better resist hurricane winds.

ASCE is the world's largest publisher of civil engineering information"producing over 65,000 pages in 1997. The Society publishes a monthly magazine, Civil Engineering, monthly newspaper, ASCE News, 25 technical and professional journals, and a variety of books, including acquired titles, conference proceedings, committee reports, manuals of practice, standards, and monographs.

ASCE works closely with Congress, the White House and federal agencies to build sound national policy on engineering issues. The Society's award-winning Key Contact Program"a national grassroots network of more than 10,000 civil engineers"also serves as an important voice on federal policy.

To encourage greater information sharing among civil engineers around the globe, ASCE has signed 49 agreements of cooperation with sister societies in other nations. The Society also serves 6,700 members in 142 nations. Informing civil engineers about new developments in civil engineering, the Society holds 15-20 technical conferences annually, with an average total attendance of 10,000. ASCE will hold its 1997 annual convention in Minneapolis from October 5-8. The Society also offers 150 continuing education seminars each year, as well as home study programs.

ASCE established its research affiliate, the Civil Engineering Research Foundation (CERF), in 1989 to "facilitate, coordinate and integrate" research for the civil engineering profession and the design and construction industry, and help expedite the transfer of research results into practice.

The grassroots structure of ASCE will be used to generate support, interest, and enthusiastic participation in the Web-based history project. The membership will be an integral part of the promotional effort, including direct mail, advertising, editorial coverage in the monthly publications, targeted e-mail and fax messages, etc.

ASCE has drawn on the cross-disciplinary interests of its membership in identifying the topics expected to be developed through its Web site. Initial topic selection was endorsed by the leadership of the Society, based on projects previously selected as Outstanding Civil Engineering Achievement (OCEA) award winners.

As described below, three topics have been identified for this project. These topics represent geotechnical, structural, environmental, and transportation engineering sub-disciplines, thus providing an opportunity to engage individuals from a very wide cross-section of the engineering community. In addition to representing a wide cross-section of the civil engineering community in a unified effort, this project also fills the critical need to develop efficient and effective methods of collecting information on the major advances in civil engineering since 1960. ASCE continues to explore mechanisms for creating an accessible, affordable mechanism of tracking and teaching the history of civil engineering. The proposed Web project presents exciting opportunities and challenges and is key to achieving the Society's vision, mission, and objectives, as outlined in ASCE's strategic plan.

ASCE Project 1: Washington DC Metro Transit System

In 1978, at the time of construction, the Washington Metro Transit System was one of the nation's largest public works projects, providing a vital link between the Nation's Capital and its surrounding suburbs. The system included approximately 100 miles of line and cost over $5 billion, while providing an energy saving method of quick commuting for more than 135,000 travelers daily. Engineering accomplishments of the system include: underpinning of monumental historic buildings in the Capital; commuter control of ticketing and train operations; pioneering in rail/bus/auto interfacing at suburban stations; new tunneling procedures; aesthetically pleasing stations; and extraordinary efforts to reduce train noise levels. The choice of routes to make up the system was affected by several factors, including: demographic studies, citizen involvement, engineering studies, alternative analysis, and geological considerations. In planning the transit system, the main emphasis was placed on people and getting them to and from their jobs.

ASCE Project 2: World Trade Center

The New York World Trade Center, with its twin 110-story (1,350 feet high) towers, was the tallest in the world at the time of its completion in 1973. The Trade Center initially contained approximately 9 million square feet of office space and first opened its doors to tenants in November, 1970. The project was estimated at $650 million. In addition to the towers, the Trade Center contains four low-lying buildings around an open area of almost five acres. The towers rise from a base that has its foundations in a huge "bath tub" enclosed by concrete walls placed by the slurry-trench method. The quantities of material required for the center were enormous. More steel was erected at the Center than that required for the construction of the Verranzano-Narrows Bridge, and approximately 80,000 kilowatts of electricity were required to operate the World Trade Center, representing enough power to serve a mid-sized city.

ASCE Project 3: The Trans-Alaska Pipeline

In January 1968, Atlantic Richfield Company (ARCO) announced that the Prudhoe Bay State No. 1, an exploratory well on the Arctic Slope of Alaska, returned a substantial flow of gas from an interval at approximately 8,500 feet. In September 1969, Mobil Oil, Phillips Petroleum, and Standard of California, operating in varying partnerships, hit oil in five of eight exploratory wells. Initial estimates claimed that the crude reserves at Prudhoe was 9.6 billion barrels. The size of the find and where it was found were important aspects in how to transport the material from the cold Arctic to the market waiting far to the south. In fact, the technical problems began with casing problems while drilling in permafrost to bring up hot oil.

Although several notions were toyed with to bring the oil to market, a pipeline was the basic choice from the start. First route surveys had been made as early as 1964. A combination of need in the rest of the U.S. due to shortages and threatened or real embargoes from the Middle East as well as the economics of finding and delivering the oil prompted the oil companies to get a line constructed as quickly as possible. Three companies active on the Slope, ARCO, BP, and Humble, formed the Trans-Alaska Pipeline System (TAPS) and announced plans for a pipeline in February 1969, its route and terminus at Valdez. In April 1969, the 48-inch special cold-weather steel was ordered from Japan.

The pipeline, even at earliest cost estimates, was to be the largest privately financed project in history. Engineering and environmental problems to be surmounted in crossing Alaska were unique. The 4-foot tube would cross 3 mountain ranges at passes of up to 4,800 feet, 600 rivers and streams, including the Yukon, and 3 potentially active earthquake faults.

The 500,000 tons of steel pipe were then valued at more than $100 million and the details on the specifications revealed precise stipulations in metallurgy, manufacturing method, testing, and inspection. The first pipe was not actually laid until 1975 due partially to land ownership and availability, environmental and wildlife concerns, and legal delays. Construction officially began on April 29, 1974 and was completed on June 20, 1977. The pipeline cost approximately $8 billion to build and is elevated above ground in some locations and buried 6 to 8 feet deep in others.

Founded in 1880, ASME International is the premier organization for promoting the art, science, and practice of mechanical engineering throughout the world. With 125,000 members, it is a worldwide engineering society focused on technical, educational, and research issues. It conducts one of the world,s largest technical publishing operations, holds some 30 technical conferences and 200 professional development courses each year, and sets nearly 600 industrial and manufacturing standards.

ASME's mission is to promote the technical competency and professional well-being of its members and, through quality programs and activities in mechanical engineering, better enable its practitioners to contribute to the well-being of humankind.

Governed through a volunteer membership structure, ASME's Board of Governors has five reporting Councils: Codes and Standards, Education, Engineering, Member Affairs, and Public Affairs. Under Membership, ASME is logistically divided into 13 regions with more than 210 Sections and 368 Student Sections. Under the Council on Engineering, members, technical interests are represented by 36 Divisions, in the areas of energy conversion, energy resources, systems and design, environment and transportation, materials and structures, manufacturing, and general and basic engineering. ASME also has three Institutes: the ASME Gear Research Institute, the International Gas Turbine Institute, and the Mining and Excavation Research Institute.

Programs throughout ASME emphasize lifelong learning and collaboration. For instance, ASME's Center for Research and Technology Development facilitates the development and application of technology in areas of interest to members and encourages partnerships among those in industry, government, and academia. Our domestic and international education efforts include continuing education short courses, custom-tailored in-company courses, and video review courses on the Professional Engineering examination and the Fundamentals of Engineering examination. ASME also produces a series of satellite programs regularly broadcast to companies, ASME sections, and universities throughout the United States, Canada, and the Caribbean. Relationships with other organizations extend worldwide, including 12 joint conference agreements, 9 joint award boards, and 50 agreements of cooperation with engineering societies outside the United States. ASME has official correspondents in 45 countries.

ASME has more than 400 employees, with its headquarters in New York City, Service Center in Fairfield, New Jersey; Washington, D.C., Center; Petroleum Division office in Houston; International Gas Institute office in Atlanta; and five regional offices: Chicago; Dallas; San Francisco; Brewster, New York; and Burke, Virginia.

Major avenues of communication within ASME include Mechanical Engineering magazine, ASME's monthly flagship, in addition to its monthly tabloid, ASME News, and on-line Web site, ASMENET. The home page contains a fully searchable catalog that includes Codes and Standards, as well as all technical publications and discussion forums and links to the various units of society involvement. Keeping at the forefront of communications, ASME developed its first all-electronic proceedings on CD-ROM in 1996. Applied Mechanics Reviews (AMR) was recently introduced on CD-ROM as well.

Communication and collaboration are also key to the mission of ASME's Council on Public Affairs and Board on Public Information. Among numerous public service programs in government relations, diversity activities, and media relations, a history program is administered by the History and Heritage Committee, formed in 1971. The program,s primary activities include landmarks recognition that has identified and documented nearly 200 landmarks, an oral history library of past society presidents, and an engineer-historian award, among others. Through History and Heritage, ASME is able to collaborate with other societies and organizations like the Historic American Engineering Record and the Society for the History of Technology.

Within ASME's home page, its history pages include information on these activities along with some general society history. Plans for further on-line development include biographies, a bibliography, and a time-line database chronology of mechanical engineering achievements, from 3500 BCE to 1980. Chaired by J. Lawrence, Larry Lee, the History and Heritage Committee supports the development of the World Wide Web in improving the accessibility of mechanical engineering history and involving engineers in the telling of that history.

ASME proposes the following two topics as ones that would make interesting and significant contributions to this interactive Web project:

ASME Project 1: Finite Element Analysis

Finite element analysis (FEA) was a breakthrough developed and widely adopted in the 1960s for use in designing and testing structures and a wide variety of manufactured products, especially in the aerospace and automotive industries. Digital computers enabled designers to mathematically define a structure through groups of nodal points that represent the structure. Loads and constraints can be applied to support or fix the structure, and data then can be analyzed using established equations to resolve unknown displacements and internal stresses. Designs can then be refined or altered prior to prototype construction. Once FEA parameters have been established, variables can be manipulated to investigate new design possibilities. Less time is spent from product definition to product release, with reduced cost and improved quality. Many finite element analysis programs have been developed to enable accurate analyses of structures under a wide variety of static and dynamic loads. The diversity of applications within the mechanical engineering discipline makes this topic interesting and significant to a large population of engineers.

ASME Project 2: Artificial Heart Pump

The first implantable heart pump to receive widespread clinical use was developed during the 1970s at Penn State University in Hershey, Pennsylvania. It was approved by the FDA in 1980 and was in general use by 1984. The pump provides circulatory support for open-heart surgery patients who could not be immediately weaned from heart-lung machines, as well as for patients awaiting cardiac transplant operations. Sustaining seriously ill patients for weeks to months, artificial heart pumps have saved many human lives. Manufacturing a device with an extremely smooth and seam-free inner surface was crucial to the pump's success. It was a pioneer in the field of active, implantable machinery and a landmark achievement in bioengineering.

Artificial heart research and development included a broad range of mechanical engineering activities. This work included, for example:

* Development of Magnetic Bearing for an Axial Flow Blood Pump

* Computational Fluid Dynamics and Numerical Optimization

* Advanced Flow Visualization of Artificial Heart Components

* Development of a Robust Controller

* Gait-powered Battery Charging Augmentation

* Rapid Prototyping of Artificial Heart Components

* Biomaterials Compatibility Evaluation

The development of artificial hearts and finite element analysis took place on an international scale, involving universities, private companies, and governments. This broad range of organizations and the global nature of the efforts, combined with the relatively short history of the technology and the computer literacy of the engineers and technicians involved, make these topics particularly suitable for this project.