Scope: ISQED 2008, education policy

Scope checks out the upcoming quality-themed conference, editorializes about politicians and education, and finds evidence of rear-seat entertainment in a 50-year-old copy of EDN.

Edited by Ron Wilson -- EDN, 2/7/2008

Looking Ahead: To ISQED 2008

The International Symposium on Quality in Electronic Design, volume 2008, will take place March 17 to 19 in San Jose, CA. As the only conference focusing on quality in IC design, this small event continues to grow. This year, the conference will start the controversy early, with a Monday panel asking whether design for manufacturing is helping or hurting quality. Along with a variety of technical sessions on design, verification, and test issues, plenary sessions will offer keynotes on—among other topics—how enterprise-information-technology issues can help or hinder the vast collaborations that are necessary in design today, how new techniques can put bounds on the seemingly infinite loop of chip verification, and how manufacturing test must respond to the consumerization of microelectronics markets.

Oldsmobile engineers and General Motors Delco Division have developed an automobile TV set for rear-seat viewing. The owner may remove the set for operation outside the car. Chief components of the experimental set are a receiver, 9-in. screen, transistor power supply, and a collapsible V-shaped aerial mounted on the car roof just ahead of the rear window. The set’s power supply converts 12V dc from the car’s battery into ac for operating the picture tube. Two relays automatically switch the necessary connections when the user removes the set from its mounting in the car.

—Electrical Design News, February 1958

But don’t bet on finding it. After World War II, the United States made a huge investment in education, not only in public schools but also in funding directly to students for higher education. Arguably, that investment contributed to the blossoming of defense-related technology into a vibrant private industry in the postwar decades, underlying much of the period’s economic growth. But today’s politicians assume education to be an expense, not an investment: to be minimized, not managed. The result is that the United States produces fewer highly educated engineers than it needs, and many of the engineers educated here return to their native lands to pursue their careers. Just one more vital issue that won’t be showing up in the campaign speeches.