History and Aims of the Current Zero Club

During the biennial (every two years) CIGRE Meeting of 1960 in Paris, France a number of electrical engineers and physicists interested in gas-discharges in circuit-breakers met privately to discuss current problems.

It was agreed that they needed a forum for free, informal discussion of circuit-breaker problems and research, uninhibited by commercial, national, or similar restrictions.

Membership was accordingly restricted to those actively engaged in major researches and whose scientific integrity and confidentiality could be relied upon. It, of course, would place no restrictions whatever on any member who wished to make public his own work.

Such procedures were not possible at the CIGRE meeting where the function of each delegate is to represent his own country and/or company, institution, etc. Thus, a select working group was founded by Prof. D. Th. J. ter Horst to be known as the “Current Zero Club”.

The first meeting was held in Arnhem, the Netherlands, in 1961, attended by about twenty members coming from ten countries. The meeting was managed by Prof. D. ter Horst and the chairman was Mr. Hochrainer. Other chairmen (in past decades) were prof. dr. Klaus Möller, Prof. Geert Damstra, dr. Michel Barrault and Prof. dr. Satoru Yanabu,

Current chairman (since 2009) is dr. Rene Smeets, the Netherlands

Each member represented only himself, not his company, university or institution.