6/1/2013 Author: Shapour Azarm,
Volume: 135(6) – June, 2013
With this issue, I am pleased to announce that the Journal of Mechanical Design (JMD) has reached the 200th issue! Clearly this would not have been possible without the contributions and support of numerous people including the Journal’s editors, associate editors, guest editors, reviewers, readers and support staff.
The Journal started in 1978 by the Design Engineering Division and up until 2003 was published quarterly. As the number of submissions and backlogs increased JMD moved to bimonthly publication during 2004-2006 and beginning in 2007 to monthly publication. JMD is now considered a premier journal in the area of mechanical design and has received submissions from more than 80 countries worldwide. Examples of current topics covered in JMD (see: www.asmejmd.org) are design automation, design of direct contact systems, design education, design of energy, fluid and power systems, design of mechanisms and robotics, design for manufacture and life cycle, and design theory and methodology. The overarching link among these topics is design and synthesis rather than just analysis.
I would like to take this opportunity and thank our associate editors who have recently completed their term. These are: Tom Chase, Oliver de Weck, Ashitava Ghosal, Zissimos Mourelatos, Avinash Singh, and Hong-Sen Yan.
For this 200th issue, I thought it would be timely to invite Professor Cesare Rossi from the University of Napoli “Federico II”, Italy, to write a guest editorial “On Designs by Ancient Engineers”. Professor Rossi kindly accepted my invitation. Professor Rossi’s research activities have been on topics such as tribology, rotor dynamics, mechanical vibrations, chaotic motions of mechanical systems, and robot mechanics. For the last several years he has become interested in studies on the history of engineering. He is a member of the Italian Society for the History of Engineering and is a 2013 Observer at the IFToMM Permanent Commission for History of Machines and Mechanisms Science. He has co-authored a book titled: “Ancient Engineers’ Inventions,” Springer, 2009. In his guest editorial, Professor Rossi provides a few design examples that demonstrate the level of sophistication of the devices and machines designed by the ancient engineers.
Shapour Azarm
Editor
