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IT is again my privilege to be your Guest Editor for the section on Electrical ... the vitality and exciting prospects of Electric Contact research. ROLAND S. TIMSIT ...
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IEEE TRANSACTIONS ON COMPONENTS, PACKAGING, AND MANUFACTURING TECHNOLOGY—PART A, VOL. 21, NO. 1, MARCH 1998

Foreword Electrical Contacts

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T is again my privilege to be your Guest Editor for the section on Electrical Contacts in this issue of the IEEE TRANSACTIONS ON COMPONENTS, PACKAGING, AND MANUFACTURING TECHNOLOGY—PART A. I am grateful to all the reviewers, the editorial staff at IEEE, and the current Editor-in-Chief, Dr. A. Bar-Cohen, for their invaluable assistance and support in preparing this issue of the TRANSACTIONS. The past several years have witnessed the vigorous growth of electrical contact research. This growth has been spurred by demands for greater efficiency and reliability, and in some cases for increased miniaturization, in electrical connectors. There is little doubt that superior performance continues to be achieved, for connectors of all types. Superior performance has stemmed from the advances in electrical contact technologies that have issued from an increasingly better understanding of contact phenomena in electrical connections.

The Electrical Contact section in this issue of IEEE TRANSACTIONS ON COMPONENTS, PACKAGING, AND MANUFACTURING TECHNOLOGY—PART A contains nine papers presented at the 42nd Holm Conference, Chicago, IL, September 1996. Although the papers focus heavily on arcing contacts, they illustrate the capability of the multidisciplinary approach prevalent in electrical contact research, in advancing electrical connector technologies. I hope the publication succeeds in conveying to the reader the vitality and exciting prospects of Electric Contact research.

Publisher Item Identifier S 1070-9886(98)04471-0.

ROLAND S. TIMSIT, Guest Editor AMP Incorporated Markham, Ont. L3R 1E1, Canada [email protected]

Roland S. Timsit (M’85) received the Ph.D. degree in atomic physics from the University of Toronto, Toronto, Ont., Canada, in 1970. He spent 20 years in the aluminum industry where he led research and development associated with the properties of aluminum surfaces. This included the tribology of aluminum metal-working, electrical contact and oxidation properties of aluminum, and the development of novel joining processes for aluminum. He is currently Chief Technologist with Power Technologies, AMP Incorporated, Markham, Ont. Dr. Timsit received two IEEE awards for his electrical contact work and the Robert L. Peaslee award from the American Welding Institute. He is active in several scientific/engineering committees in North America.

1070–9886/98$10.00  1998 IEEE