| by Mike Davis | |
(2005-04-04) |
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How Auto Shows "Yoostabee" by Mike Davis (1/13/2003)
Before the glitz and the hype, there was glitz and hype. Just a different kind.
Whenever I wander through the mammoth exhibition in
My subjective impression is: not only has the Congress grown over the last 40 years, its very complexion has changed. In the 1960s, as I recall, it "yoostabee" that the only women seen were those professional models luring marble-eyed engineers to witness them exhorting the virtues of supplier products at exhibits. Virtually the only skin pigmentation present was white, and the only language overheard, English. The exhibitors were mostly old-line American trademark names.
Objectively, however, I thought it would be easy to present this account of the SAE Congress today in the hard facts that business journalists and engineers alike demand, by comparing a 1966 SAE program with that of 2005, SAE's Centennial Year.
Alas, there was not one of 1966 to be found, nor even of a 1970 program for a 35-year comparison. Not at SAE headquarters in Warrendale, Pennsylvania, not at the SAE Detroit office nor that of the Detroit Section, nor at two local universities nor two auto-company libraries to which I had access. The technical papers get archived because, among other things, they have a long shelf life for sales, but not so the programs.
Fortunately for this retrospective, the National Automotive History Collection at the Detroit Public Library came to my rescue with some fascinating materials that, while not precisely what I had in mind originally, more than filled in the details.
Can you imagine today holding the SAE meeting with all its technical sessions in just a couple of rooms at the then-new, now-former,
The only exhibition then was the separately held, but simultaneous, Detroit Automobile Dealers' Association annual new car model show. SAE attendees were instructed to take the "
Can you imagine today the chaos of holding these two events, the Auto Show and the SAE Congress, in
Attendance at the '99 Congress topped 46,000, with 1120 papers delivered in 235 sessions. There were 1100 exhibitors showing their wares to the capacity of the 334,000 square-foot hall. More than 50 countries put in an appearance one way or another. Lately, attendance and the number of exhibitors has dropped off sharply, drawing 35,392 registrants in 2004 as the core local auto companies and suppliers felt the money squeeze of declining market share.
But SAE has big hopes for 2005 particularly since it moved the meeting from the early March of recent years to April 11-15 when weather should be less of a concern. Needless to say, SAE has grown a bit since its beginnings, even if the road has been bumpy lately because of the economy.
Titles of yore
Another perspective of how SAE yoostabee can be gleaned from titles of the 1926 sessions and some of the papers. The sessions included Automobile Supercharging, Research, Aeronautic, Brake, Body Production, Engine, Headlighting, Motorcoach, Vapor-Cooling, Fuels and Lubrication, and Production.
In some ways the same, in other ways it was very different. You can make the comparisons to your 2005 Program, but consider this: Chrysler's legendary Carl Breer chaired the 1926 Brake session, and its two papers concerned temperature effects on linings and causes of squeaking.
Fast-forward to 1939, the eve of World War II. Held from May 22 to June 8 and billed as the first World Automotive Engineering Congress, SAE that year spread itself across four cities - New York, San Francisco, Indianapolis, and Detroit, the first two for tie-in to those cities' World's Fairs.
An accompanying map of the 1939 SAE program with its 33 different sessions showed how attendees at the successive city meetings would work their way west by train, including the Indianapolis Speedway 500-mile race on Memorial Day. This truly was an ambitious program when SAE had only 7000 members. (Today SAE has 85,000 members worldwide.)
As might be expected for the times, papers on aircraft (including helicopters!) and aircraft engines dominated the 1939 sessions along with those on diesel engines - General Motors had introduced its revolutionary truck diesels just the year before. Several papers were presented by, gasp, Europeans. By way of comparison, at the 2004 SAE World Congress more than 20 percent of the attendees were from outside the
Industry big names - Kettering and Knudsen of GM, Keller and Zeder of Chrysler, Hoffman of Studebaker - were featured at evening events. Despite the fact Old Henry had been an SAE founder, Ford Motor Company was represented in the printed program solely by company propagandist William J. Cameron, host of the Ford Sunday Evening Hour of classical music on network radio.
SAE membership tripled by the late '40s, and the Congress grew apace. Attendance in 1957, for instance, came to 5000, when newsworthy papers ranged from fuel injection to squelching "tinny" sounds of car doors slamming.
By 1964, attendance had climbed to 20,000, the number of exhibits to 150, and among the 168 technical papers delivered in 61 sessions, the interest was increasingly on safety and emissions.
Thirty years ago, the 1975 SAE Congress focused on "resources conservation," included one way or another in many of the more than a hundred sessions. The Exhibition Hall offered 1450 booths or floor spaces, and the 110-plus exhibitors included the National Highway Safety Administration, Japan Automotive Parts Industries Association, trade agencies of the British and Swedish governments, and the Michigan Department of Commerce's industrial plant location service.
Today,
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