The last year of the swinging sixties was famous for a number of technological advancements including the launch of the Institution of Engineering and Technology’s (IET) INSPEC Database.

1969 was also famous for Neil Armstrong taking the first steps on the moon, the launch of the Mariner 6 Mars probe, the start of regular colour television broadcasts in the UK and the invention of the Unix computer operating system.

INSPEC, the IET’s bibliographic database of abstracts to journal articles, conference proceedings, technical reports and other literature, celebrates its Ruby anniversary this year, although the online archives date back to 1898.

INSPEC provides comprehensive coverage of traditional and cutting-edge publications in the fields of physics, electrical and electronic engineering, communications, computer science, control engineering, information technology, manufacturing and mechanical engineering.

In addition, there is significant coverage of areas such as operations research, material science, oceanography, engineering mathematics, nuclear engineering, environmental science, geophysics, nanotechnology, biomedical technology and biophysics.

INSPEC now adds nearly 700,000 records each year to the database all of which have a range of specialised subject indexing created by scientific subject experts to enhance retrieval. A further INSPEC milestone will be reached this Autumn as the 11 millionth record will be added.