IMS has made a substantial improvement in the dissemination of metallographic knowledge and the effect of microstructure on service performance. IMS has had a vibrant history over the first 50 years of its existence, and we hope this will continue well into the 21st century. The importance of the work we do to support our world of materials technology, manufacturing, and failure analysis will never end. The commitment to disseminate the body of knowledge we have gathered in the fields of metallography and materials science is woven into the fabric of IMS. Our endeavors to teach and spread the knowledge of metallography and microstructural interpretation will continue under the auspices of ASM, through our meetings and through our journal and our individual publications.
IMS was incorporated in September 1967 and the first meeting was held in November 1968. IMS has conducted 49 meetings—50 if we count the quantitative metallography meeting in San Antonio in 2004, which was not a traditional convention. Our 50th convention will be held later this year in Pittsburgh. IMS is an outgrowth of the Atomic Energy Commission’s annual meetings that started in the 1940s with the Manhattan Project. At their May 1967 meeting at Brookhaven National Laboratory, John Bender and Kaye Johnson from the Los Alamos Scientific Laboratory in New Mexico and Fred Cochran from the General Atomic facility in California decided to expand their program to include all metallographers, regardless of specific materials interests. Incorporation followed in September 1967. John Bender was the first president, Fred Cochran was the VP, Kaye Johnson was secretary, and Jerry Sadofsky, Dick Buchheit, Lou Hartcorn, F.D. Carpenter, and C.K.H. “Bud” Du Bose were directors.
In the early years, IMS tried to create two journals, but neither was successful due to the new society’s limited membership. The first convention was held in Denver in 1968 with Art Calabra as general chairman. Dr. George Kehl of Columbia University and Bud Du Bose of Oak Ridge National Laboratory organized the first International Metallographic Contest (IMC) at that meeting. The first Pierre Jacquet Award was won by Len Salvage of Bethlehem Steel’s Homer Research Laboratories.
The IMC has remained very popular over the 50 years of IMS although contest rules have changed a bit over time. In 1989, an 11th class (no prize money) was added for IMS officers, employees of award sponsors, and commercial exhibitors. ASM also ran an annual metallographic contest, initiated in 1958. The grand prize was called the Francis F. Lucas Award. In 1972, ASM and IMS agreed to combine the two contests and the resulting grand prize was called the Pierre Jacquet – Francis F. Lucas Award. Numerous IMS members have served as the contest chairman over the years, including Chuck Echer, Bob Crouse, Ed Harper, Dave Dosier, and Nat Saenz. In addition, many IMS members have served as contest judges over the years. Jim Nelson and George Blann were regular judges, and also represented Buehler Ltd., the primary award sponsor.
Fred Cochran also created IMS’s first successful journal, Metallography, published by Elsevier Scientific Publishing Co. Professor Charles Hayes became the editor in 1974. Chris Bagnall took over in 1978 and continued as editor until December 2008. In 1990, the name was changed to Materials Characterization. Associate editors have included Kaye Johnson, John Bender, Nita Lohf, Bob Gray, Roy Cornwell, Mel Cowgill, George Vander Voort, Mary Grace Burke, Brian Ralph, Ian Baker, Maarten Broekmans, Bob Gold, Dennis Hetzner, and J.D. Robson. Buehler Ltd. sponsored the Best Paper Award for Metallography/Materials Characterization each year. After Bagnall retired, Ian Baker took over as editor. Changes that he introduced to the journal’s focus led to a reduced interest by IMS members. In combination with this change, and a desire to have a journal of their own, IMS/ASM discontinued their association with Elsevier. ASM then formed a committee to launch a new journal for IMS. The result was publication by Springer in February 2012 of Metallography, Microstructure, and Analysis with Ryan Deacon as editor. This journal has continued to grow in popularity since its debut.
Dick Buchheit served as IMS treasurer from 1971 to 1991 and did an exceptional job. In 1981, he also assumed secretariat duties until 1991 when he retired from the Battelle-Columbus Laboratories.
SlipLines, the IMS newsletter, started in 1974 with Connie McCall as the initial editor. She was the wife of James McCall of Battelle-Columbus Laboratories, who was a very active leader of IMS. Connie retired as editor in 1983 and Jim turned over the editorship of Microstructural Science after 12 years. SlipLines was subsequently edited by Paul Petretsky, T. Alan Place, Bob Gray, and Bob Crouse, until ASM staff took over editing duties.
IMS published proceedings of the first four meetings (1968-1971). The 5th to 15th meetings (1972-1982) were published by Elsevier as Microstructural Science, edited by James McCall, as Volumes 1 to 11. Since 1983, ASM has published the series with George Vander Voort as editor from 1983 to 1989 (Volumes 12 to 18, 16th to 22nd meetings) and Mac Louthan as editor from 1991 to 1994 (Volumes 19 to 22, 24th to 26th meetings). No proceedings were published from 1990 (23rd IMS meeting). Volumes 23 to 26, the 27th to 31st meetings, 1994 to 1998, were published by ASM International. From 1999 to 2001, IMS met at the Fall MS&T meetings and Microstructural Science ceased publication. From 2002 to 2016, IMS met with the annual Microscopy & Microanalysis meeting.
IMS has had a long history of organizing technical symposia at their annual meetings, starting in 1971. Jim McCall and Bill Mueller, followed by Jim McCall and Mike French, ran many symposia from 1972-1986. From 1987 to 1996, George Vander Voort, Chris Bagnall, and others have organized symposia and this continues today. Workshops have also been introduced, as well as short educational courses covering many topics. As an example, in 1988 George Vander Voort and Jerry Cole chaired a workshop on Applied Digital Image Analysis. Vander Voort followed this with workshops on failure analysis, quantitative metallography, and applied image analysis in 1991, 1992, and 1994. Uta Harnisch also organized several workshops.
The Henry Clifton Sorby Award is named after the Englishman who first observed the true microstructure of metal and correctly identified seven constituents in iron and steel. The prize was first awarded at the 1976 IMS convention in Seattle to Professor George L. Kehl of Columbia University. The second Sorby Award was presented to Professor Cyril Stanley Smith of MIT. The list of winners is an international Who’s Who in metallography.
The 1980 IMS convention was held at the Old Ship Hotel in Brighten, England—our first and only venture outside North America. This meeting was organized with the cooperation of the Royal Microscopical Society of the UK. Counting 2017, 43 of the 50 IMS meetings were held in the U.S. and six meetings were held in Canada (Alberta, Ontario, and Quebec Provinces). The 43 U.S. meetings occurred in only 22 states, with five in California, four in Colorado (all in Denver), four in Ohio, and four in Pennsylvania.
By 1992, IMS was starting to feel the effects of lost engineering jobs and reduced technical staffs in the U.S. Younger members were finding it more difficult to attend annual meetings while older members were retiring. In November 1992, the IMS Board of Directors and the ASM International Board of Trustees voted to enter into negotiations regarding IMS becoming the first affiliate society of ASM. This proposal was placed on a ballot in 1993 to the IMS membership and it was overwhelmingly approved. IMS became an affiliate society of ASM on October 30, 1993.
—George F. Vander Voort
