How old is the profession?

[Richard Lippincott <rlippincott -at- YAHOO -dot- COM>]

---George Mena <George -dot- Mena -at- ESSTECH -dot- COM> wrote:
>
> At that time, David Sarnoff's research center (he fathered RCA and
> pioneered the superheterodyne radio receiver, which we've now turned
> into an entire industry or three) was about nine years old and
America's
> entry into World War II was three years away.  I'm not really
surprised
> that it was listed.

And Walt Tucker said that the job title "goes back to at least 1938."

It goes back even further than that. Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute
started to offer a Master's in Technical Writing in 1925. (The degree
is now apparently called a "Master's Degree in Technical
Communication," but it retained the "Technical Writing" name up
through at least the mid 1980s.

Although RPI claimes to have the oldest graduate tech writing degree
program, my guess is that they didn't invent the term. If they
instituted the program in '25, there must have been a year or so of
discussion and planning prior to that, which would push back further
the fact that people were working in the field and in need of the
degree program. I'd say we can track it back to 1920, at least.




==

Richard Lippincott
Comverse Network Systems
Andover, Massachusetts
rlippincott -at- yahoo -dot- com
rjl -at- comverse -dot- com

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