IEEE Spectrum February, 2014 - 10

02.14

declared that articles in Spectrum reflected
the author's point of view, not some sort of
consensus of the IEEE's officers or, even more
improbably, of its many members. (Such a
declaration is published to this day on one of

the contents pages and below the masthead
of every issue of Spectrum.)
The controversies repeatedly raised a
question about Spectrum, Christiansen says:
"Who's really running this magazine? It's why

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Feb 2014

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SPectrUm.ieee.orG

Fink finally concluded, 'Look, you've got to
have a professional running this magazine,'
and he convinced the IEEE board to do it."
Fink, meanwhile, had no doubt about
whom he wanted for the job: Christiansen.
An IEEE senior member (later a Life
Fellow), Christiansen was a Cornell EE grad
and had held positions in vacuum-tube and
semiconductor-device engineering and management at CBS's electronics division. In his
spare time, he wrote for a magazine called
Electronics World, before becoming a fulltime editor in 1962.
Fink asked Christiansen to write a proposal
describing what he would do with Spectrum
if he were the editor. Christiansen's plan was
straightforward: Ban mathematical equations
(Spectrum at the time was full of them); publish shorter, tightly edited feature articles; and
include more staff-written features. And he
insisted on being not just the editor but also
the publisher of Spectrum. Fink submitted
Christiansen's proposal to the IEEE board of
directors, which agreed to all the conditions.
Christiansen's first issue was January
1972. As the staff was finalizing the issue, on
12 December 1971, David Sarnoff died in New
York City. So the new editor's first big decision was to order up a new cover story on
Sarnoff, to be written in three days. It raised a
few eyebrows at IEEE HQ: Technical-business
genius though he was, Sarnoff was reviled in
some engineering circles, partly because of
his vicious patent feud over FM radio with
engineering hero Edwin H. Armstrong. Fink,
himself dismayed, left the decision to Christiansen. After expressing his reservations,
Fink ended with, "But you're the editor." Sarnoff stayed on the cover.
And so it began. Christiansen's tenure at
Spectrum, from 1972 to 1993, was characterized by journalistic vigor and an unwavering
focus on the member-reader. In his Spectral
Lines columns, he prodded engineers to
become more active in their companies as
managers and to volunteer their expertise
as citizens; he commented on the burning
tech-related topics of the day; and he celebrated the simple pleasures of designing
something elegant. Whistle-blowing, occupational dilemmas, and the sometimes

http://shortprograms.mit.edu/ieee2014 http://SPectrUm.ieee.orG

Table of Contents for the Digital Edition of IEEE Spectrum February, 2014