IMS2012 International Microwave Symposium

When did the first International Microwave Symposium (IMS) take place? This question does not have a straight answer. An extensive report on the history of the MTT symposia is available in [1]. We only report here some historical facts, extracted from this paper and presented in a chronological order.

The first technical meeting sponsored by the PGMTT (Professional Group on Microwave Theory and Techniques) was the Symposium on Microwave Circuitry. This meeting was held in the Western Union Auditorium in New York, City, on November 7, 1952, with 210 attendees and the submission of 12 papers.

From 1953 to 1957, several additional PGMTT-sponsored technical meetings took place:

• November 5-6, 1953, Western Union Auditorium in New York City: Microwave Radio Relay Systems Symposium; co-sponsored by the Communication Systems Group and the Electron Devices Group of the IRE, no record on the number of attendees, 14 papers, papers published in each of the three groups' Transactions (April 1954 for MTT-Transactions).
• November 8-10, 1954, Engineering Societies' Building in New York City: Modern Advances in Microwave Techniques; co-sponsored by the Polytechnic Institute of Brooklyn, the Office of Naval Research, the Office of Scientific Research and the U.S. Army Signal Corps., papers published in a 492-page book.
• February 2&3, 1956, Benjamin Franklin Center for Physical Sciences at the University of Pennsylvania: National Symposium on Microwave Techniques; co-sponsored by the Professional Group on Antennas and Propagation and the Philadelphia Section of the IRE, 29 papers, papers published in the October 1956 issue of the PGMTT Transactions.
• April 2-4, 1956, Cambridge, MA: Symposium on Microwave Properties and Applications of Ferrites; co-sponsored by the Air Force Cambridge Research Center and Harvard University, 28 papers, almost 300 attendees, presentation of the first Microwave Prize (called the Annual Award).

On November 1, 1956, the PGMTT's Adcom unanimously voted to solely sponsor and finance an annual meeting. This started the series of Annual PGMTT Meetings. The first corresponding symposium had the title "Microwave Ferrites and Related Devices and their Applications," and was held on May 9-10, 1957, at the Western Union Auditorium in New York City with 306 attendees and 20 selected papers (out of 30 submitted ones). The subsequent annual meetings until 1983 are discussed in [1].

The name "symposium" was adopted at the 1958 meeting in Palo Alto. ([1] erroneously claims that the 1958 meeting was held in Stanford. Source: Kiyo Tomiyasu, TPC Chair of the 1958 meeting.)

The 1964 symposium was the first one to include “International” in its title.
 

[1] T. S. Saad, "The MTT Symposia," IEEE Trans. Microwave Theory Tech., vol. MTT-31, no. 9, Sept. 1983