A Timeless Treatise
BY MIKE VIOLETTE
Reproduced with permission of IN Compliance Magazine
Original publication 2014 Annual Guide
This month’s In Compliance Magazine features the 2014 Reference Guide, a compendium of resources for engineers, labs, vendors and like-minded professionals with a bent towards a world more in-tune with product harmony. Our industry brings together the micro and the macro, physics-wise, from the zap of ESD— brought to you by the late great Dane Mr. Niels Jonassen, aka “Mr Static”—to the big bang of lightning.
The ladies at ICM, and their
expansive list of contributors, work hard each month to bring relevance and context to the world of compliance engineering, with roots that tap deeply into the beginning of our industry with pedigree that goes back thirty-odd years to the DS&G days (not to date the youthful editors of the current publication…). Speaking of roots, a few years ago, my brother-in-law, who has a penchant for picking up things odd and curious, surprised me with a different sort of reference guide, the Standard Handbook for Electrical Engineers1, printed exquisitely on delicate vellum and bound beautifully with a dark red cover and gold title letters. Versions of this guide have been around for more than one hundred years with the first publication in 1907 (now up to its sixteenth edition). My copy (the Sixth Edition, published 1933) is some three inches thick and is set in a font size that makes me grab my reading glasses. It is to this volume that this month’s Reality Engineering is devoted, for it is the continuity of knowledge that drives the growth and sustenance of the engineering profession. Plus, it was kind of fun to read, both in its quaintness and in its timelessness.