The old order changes but men run true to form: President´s address presented at the 1941 AIEE Summer convention

THE AIEE constitution prescribes a president´s address at an annual convention. Two weeks ago, we realized the import of that prescription and cast about for a subject worthy of our members´ attention and a few of those precious premium pages in our publications. Following the usual practice of an engineer, we did a little research and spent a long day reading the addresses of past presidents to see what they had done under like conditions. Have any of the rest of you ever read all the presidents´ addresses? Out of that study, several harvests were gathered. Two of the direct ones were an interesting and satisfying day, and the knowledge that there is no pattern for such an address, beyond the quite frequent use of an opening sentence equivalent to the one I used. Among the indirect harvests was the conception of the subject for our address, “The Old Order Changes, but Men Run True to Form”. Both parts of that are borrowed, as are probably, though unintentionally, other things that will be said. The words of the first part of the title, “The Old Order Changes”, were stored in my mind many years ago when I was a boy in school. They are found in Tennyson´s “Coming of Arthur” and also “The Passing of Arthur” and read: