Electrical engineering
Electrical engineering is a discipline built on one of the most fundamental forces in nature, and it touches almost every object a person encounters in a single day. Before the 19th century ended, practitioners had strung a global electric telegraph network across continents and beneath oceans. That network was the seed from which an entire profession grew. How did humanity move from a device that moved gold leaf by static charge to a global infrastructure carrying millions of voices at once? And what are the hidden threads connecting the scientists who mapped magnetism in the 1820s to the engineers who built the computers that guided astronauts to the Moon?
Those are the questions this documentary sets out to answer.
William Gilbert was among the earliest figures to study electricity with rigor. He drew a clear distinction between magnetism and static electricity, and he is credited with establishing the very term "electricity". He also designed the versorium, a device that could detect the presence of statically charged objects.
In 1762, Swedish professor Johan Wilcke invented a device that would later be named the electrophorus. It produced a static electric charge, extending the toolkit available to experimenters. By 1800, Alessandro Volta had built the voltaic pile, a forerunner of the electric battery, giving researchers for the first time a reliable, continuous source of electric current.
The inventions of the 1800s came rapidly. Hans Christian Orsted discovered in 1820 that an electric current produces a magnetic field capable of deflecting a compass needle. William Sturgeon followed in 1825 with the electromagnet. Joseph Henry and Edward Davy produced the electrical relay in 1835. Georg Ohm quantified the relationship between current and potential difference in 1827. Michael Faraday discovered electromagnetic induction in 1831. James Clerk Maxwell then pulled these threads together in 1873, publishing a unified theory of electricity and magnetism in his treatise Electricity and Magnetism.
From that theoretical foundation, practical applications could be built.
In 1782, Georges-Louis Le Sage demonstrated in Berlin what is likely the world's first form of electric telegraphy. The device used 24 different wires, one for each letter of the alphabet, and connected two rooms through an electrostatic signal that moved gold leaf by electrical conduction.
Francisco Salva Campillo proposed an electrostatic telegraph system in 1795 and worked intensively on electrical telegraphy between 1803 and 1804. He presented a report at the Royal Academy of Natural Sciences and Arts of Barcelona in 1804. His design drew heavily on Volta's battery and on the electrolysis of water demonstrated by William Nicholson and Anthony Carlyle in 1800.
Francis Ronalds built an electric telegraph system in 1816 and documented a vision of how electricity could transform the world. More than 50 years later, he joined the Society of Telegraph Engineers, an organization that would later become the Institution of Electrical Engineers. Fellow members regarded him as the first of their cohort.
By the close of the 19th century, engineers had built land-lines, submarine cables, and, from around 1890, wireless telegraphy systems. An international conference in Chicago in 1893 standardized the units that had become essential to the field: volt, ampere, coulomb, ohm, farad, and henry. These definitions were immediately recognized in legislation in many countries.
In 1882, Thomas Edison switched on the world's first large-scale electric power network. It delivered 110 volts of direct current to 59 customers on Manhattan Island in New York City. Two years later, Sir Charles Parsons invented the steam turbine, making power generation significantly more efficient.
Alternating current developed rapidly through the 1880s and 1890s. Transformer designs came from Karoly Zipernowsky, Otto Blathy, and Miksa Deri, whose work produced what became known as ZBD transformers. Lucien Gaulard, John Dixon Gibbs, and William Stanley Jr. also contributed key designs. AC's ability to transmit power efficiently over long distances through transformers gave it a practical edge over DC.
Practical AC motor designs were independently invented by Galileo Ferraris and Nikola Tesla. Mikhail Dolivo-Dobrovolsky and Charles Eugene Lancelot Brown then developed the design into a practical three-phase form. Charles Steinmetz and Oliver Heaviside contributed the theoretical framework underlying AC engineering.
The competition between systems backed by George Westinghouse, who championed AC, and Thomas Edison, who backed DC, came to be called the war of the currents. AC was ultimately adopted as the standard.
Guglielmo Marconi began work in 1895 on adapting the known methods of transmitting electromagnetic waves into a commercial wireless telegraph system. Early on, he sent wireless signals over a distance of one and a half miles. In December 1901, he transmitted waves that were not affected by the curvature of the Earth. He later sent wireless signals across the Atlantic between Poldhu, Cornwall, and St. John's, Newfoundland, a distance of 2,100 miles.
Jagadish Chandra Bose investigated millimetre wave communication between 1894 and 1896, reaching frequencies of up to 60 GHz. He patented the radio crystal detector in 1901, introducing the use of semiconductor junctions to detect radio waves.
Karl Ferdinand Braun introduced the cathode-ray tube as part of an oscilloscope in 1897. John Fleming invented the diode, the first radio tube, in 1904. Two years later, Robert von Lieben and Lee De Forest independently developed the amplifier tube called the triode.
In 1920, Albert Hull developed the magnetron. Percy Spencer used it to develop the microwave oven in 1946. The British military had earlier used the magnetron in radar research, which began in 1934 under Dr. Wimperis. The first radar station at Bawdsey came into operation in August 1936.
Konrad Zuse presented the Z3 in 1941, the world's first fully functional and programmable computer built from electromechanical parts. Tommy Flowers designed and built the Colossus in 1943, the world's first fully functional electronic, digital, and programmable computer. The ENIAC, built by John Presper Eckert and John Mauchly, followed in 1946. In 1948, Claude Shannon published "A Mathematical Theory of Communication," which mathematically describes how information passes through a system with electrical noise.
John Bardeen and Walter Houser Brattain invented the first working transistor, a point-contact device, in 1947 while working under William Shockley at Bell Telephone Laboratories. The following year, the same team invented the bipolar junction transistor.
Jack Kilby invented the hybrid integrated circuit at Texas Instruments in 1958. Robert Noyce invented the monolithic integrated circuit chip at Fairchild Semiconductor in 1959.
Mohamed Atalla and Dawon Kahng invented the MOSFET at Bell Telephone Laboratories in 1959. It was the first truly compact transistor that could be miniaturized and mass-produced. Fred Heiman and Steven Hofstein built the earliest experimental MOS integrated circuit chip at RCA Laboratories in 1962. Federico Faggin developed silicon-gate MOS technology at Fairchild in 1968.
Gordon Moore predicted in 1965 that the number of transistors on an integrated circuit chip would double every two years, an observation that became known as Moore's law.
The Apollo program relied on this technology directly. MOSFETs went into the Interplanetary Monitoring Platform, and silicon integrated circuit chips powered the Apollo Guidance Computer. Apollo 11 landed astronauts on the Moon in 1969.
The first single-chip microprocessor, the Intel 4004, was released in 1971. Federico Faggin designed and realized it at Intel using silicon-gate MOS technology, together with Intel's Marcian Hoff and Stanley Mazor and Busicom's Masatoshi Shima. The microprocessor opened the path to microcomputers and personal computers.
The Technische Universitat Darmstadt founded the world's first department of electrical engineering in 1882 and introduced the first degree course in the field in 1883. The first electrical engineering degree program in the United States began at MIT in its physics department under Professor Charles Cross. Cornell University, however, produced the world's first electrical engineering graduates in 1885, after its first course in the subject was taught in 1883 in the Sibley College of Mechanical Engineering and Mechanic Arts.
Cornell President Andrew Dickson White formally established the first Department of Electrical Engineering in the United States in about 1885. The same year, University College London founded the first chair of electrical engineering in Great Britain. Professor Mendell P. Weinbach established the electrical engineering department at the University of Missouri in 1886.
Today, the IEEE claims to produce 30% of the world's literature in electrical engineering, holds over 3,000 conferences annually, and has more than 360,000 members worldwide. The IET publishes 21 journals, has a worldwide membership of over 150,000, and describes itself as the largest professional engineering society in Europe.
In the United States and Canada, only a licensed engineer may seal engineering work for public and private clients, a requirement enforced by legislation such as Quebec's Engineers Act. Practicing engineers carry liability under contract law and may face claims of negligence if their work fails. The technical skills required are equally broad: a practicing engineer must be as comfortable with quantum mechanics and solid-state physics when designing integrated circuits as with project management when leading a team.
Common questions
When did electrical engineering emerge as a recognized profession?
Electrical engineering became a recognized profession in the latter half of the 19th century, following the commercialization of the electric telegraph, the telephone, and electrical power generation. The first professional electrical engineering institutions were founded in the UK and the US during that period.
Who invented the MOSFET and why is it significant in electrical engineering?
Mohamed Atalla and Dawon Kahng invented the MOSFET at Bell Telephone Laboratories in 1959. It was the first truly compact transistor that could be miniaturized and mass-produced, and it became the most widely used electronic device in the world, enabling Moore's law and the modern electronics industry.
Where was the world's first electrical engineering degree program established?
The world's first department of electrical engineering was founded at the Technische Universitat Darmstadt in 1882, which also introduced the first degree course in 1883. Cornell University produced the world's first electrical engineering graduates in 1885.
What was the war of the currents in electrical engineering history?
The war of the currents was a competition in the United States between a George Westinghouse-backed alternating current system and a Thomas Edison-backed direct current power system. AC was ultimately adopted as the overall standard, partly because it could transmit power more efficiently over long distances using transformers.
How did Guglielmo Marconi advance wireless telegraphy?
Guglielmo Marconi began work in 1895 on adapting known electromagnetic wave transmission methods into a commercial wireless telegraph system. In December 1901 he transmitted wireless waves that were not affected by the curvature of the Earth, and he later sent signals across the Atlantic between Poldhu, Cornwall, and St. John's, Newfoundland, a distance of 2,100 miles.
What international standards came out of the 1893 Chicago conference on electrical engineering?
The 1893 international conference in Chicago produced standardized definitions for the units volt, ampere, coulomb, ohm, farad, and henry. In many countries, these definitions were immediately recognized in relevant legislation and formed the basis for future industrial standardization.
All sources
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