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              *          Guest Editorial               *
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                                    by Brad Dickinson and Eduardo Sontag


This issue celebrates the 10th Anniversary of the E-letter on Systems,
Control, and Signal Processing.  Issue number 1 was published Sept. 2, 1986.
The original subscriber list consisted of 78 recipients, whose names are
listed below.  Since then, the list has grown to well over 3000 subscriptions,
and the E-letter has spawn a number of similar activities, such as the
E-letter on digital signal processing and others.  The founders and original
editors were Brad Dickinson from Princeton and Eduardo Sontag from Rutgers.
Since issue 58, published in May 1993, the editors have been Anton Stoorvogel
and Siep Weiland from Eindhoven.

In these times of popular interest in the Web, with electronic mailing lists
and discussion groups probably in the tens of thousands, it is perhaps ironic
to point out that even the benefits of simple e-mail were not widely
acknowledged ten years ago.  When we polled people regarding the idea of
setting up an electronic newsletter, the reactions were, to put it mildly, not
uniformly encouraging.  In fact, when we attempted to first post the original
call for contributions and subscriptions, on a bulletin board at the SIAM
Conference on Linear Algebra in Signals, Systems, and Control, in Boston,
August 1985, the SIAM staff at first objected, not appreciating the point of
such electronic communication.  (Eventually, not only was the posting allowed,
but the SIAM Activity Group on Systems and Control decided to co-sponsor the
E-letter as an official activity.  The IEEE Control Systems Society also
became a sponsor in due time.)

The first issue included the preliminary program for the 1986 Digital Signal
Processing Workshop, the TOC for the Sept 1986 IEEE Trans on Information
Theory, and announcements of preprints by Antoulas, Anderson, Spong, and
Sontag.  The original list of subscribers was as follows:

Jan Allebach, Thanos Antoulas, J.D.Aplevich, John Baras, Bill Baumann, Toby
Berger, Gilmer Blankenship, Charles Boncelet, Steve Boyd, Roger Brockett, Sid
Burrus, Peter Caines, Peter Cappello, John Chiasson, Jim Clark, Costas
Courcoubetis, Ed Coyle, George Cybenko, Christopher DeMarco, Dave Delchamps,
James W. Demmel, Charlie Desoer, Bradley Dickinson, Terry Fine, Paul Fuhrmann,
Paul Fuhrmann, Y. Genin, Claude Gomez, David Goodman, Bob Gray, Michiel
Hazewinkel, Chris Heegard, Bill Hopkins, Anil Jain, Y.C. Jenq, Don Johnson,
Tom Kailath, Jim Kaiser, R.E. Kalman, Mos Kaveh, P. Krishnaprasad, P.R. Kumar,
Gerardo Lafferriere, Victor Lawrence, Edward Lee, Bede Liu, Steve Marcus,
Bengt Martensson, Bob McEliece, Nader Mehravari, Dave Messerschmidt, George
Meyer, Rodolfo Milito, Bud Mishra, Martin Morf, Rick Perry, H. Vince Poor,
Peter Ramadge, Jack Rugh, Alberto Sangiovanni-Vincentelli, Shankar Sastry,
Hans Schumacher, J. van Schuppen, Carla Schwartz, Jack Schwartz, Stuart
Schwartz, Eduardo Sontag, Mark W. Spong, Ken Steiglitz, Hector Sussmann, Stew
Tewksberry, John Thomas, David Thomson, Tran Thong, Sergio Verdu, Wing Wong,
Aaron Wyner, Stan Zak.

We feel that, even at a time of Web sophisticated search engines and a
profusion of online information on journals and conferences, there will always
be a place for edited electronic newsletters, which summarize relevant and
targeted information in a timely fashion.  Our thanks to Anton and Siep for a
great job, and see you again at the guest editorial for the 20th Anniversary!

-Brad Dickinson and Eduardo Sontag