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4. FORMATION OF THE
INTERNATIONAL UNION FOR
VACUUM SCIENCE,TECHNIQUE
AND APPLICATIONS (IUVSTA)
It would appear that the IOVST was off to an
excellent start. However, this proved not to
be the case because of problems concerning
the composition of its membership. In
some countries, because of government
restrictions, it was impossible for technical
societies, and in some cases even individuals,
to join a foreign organisation composed of
private individuals and corporate bodies.
For this reason, some vacuists and national
vacuum societies were excluded from
participation in the activities of the IOVST.
Had the IOVST been organised as a federation
of only national vacuum organisations and had
it not permitted private membership, it would
have been difficult to obtain broad international
participation since only three or four such
national organisations existed in 1959. It
appears that the Executive Committee was
aware of this dilemma and elected initially to
allow individual and corporate memberships,
but had as its final goal to organise a federation
of national vacuum societies once a sufficient
number of these had formed. In the meantime
the Executive Committee was making every
effort to encourage the creation of national
vacuum societies in countries where they did
not yet exist.
This campaign was quite successful. On
27 January 1961 in Cologne a meeting
was held between members of several
national vacuum organisations and IOVST
representatives to consider what could be
done to form an international federation of
national vacuum societies. The meeting
was called by K. Diels (D) and those in
attendance were A. S. D. Barrett (GB),
M. Berthaud (F), C. Biguenet (F), D. Degras
(F), R. Jaeckel (D), E. Thomas (B), and
L. Wegmann (CH).
SUMMARY