A Brief History of Early Electrical Engineering
The field of electrical engineering first became a recognizable occupation around the end of the 1800s. This was during the time of early commercialization of the electric telegraph as well as electric power supply. Electrical engineering deals primarily with the application and study of electronics, electricity and electromagnetism.
Though electrical engineering can be related to electronics engineering, this intersection is generally restricted to large-scale electrical systems like motor control and power transmission, whereas electronics engineering has more to do with the design of small-scale electronic systems such as those in video game systems and personal computers.
Though electricity has been a huge scientific interest since the 1600s or earlier, it wasn’t until the 1800s that research into the field of electricity became intensified. During this era, Georg Ohm quantified the relationship between the potential difference and electric current in a conductor, James Clerk Maxwell published a unified field theory of magnetism and electricity and several other pivotal discoveries and studies related to electricity were carried out.
It wasn’t until the late 19th century that universities began awarding degrees in electrical engineering. Until that time electrical engineering was considered to be a subfield of physics. During the 1880s several universities set up electrical engineering departments.
It was during this stepped up interest and application of electrical engineering that Edison initiated the first power supply operation in lower Manhattan that delivered electrical power to fifty-nine customers in 1882.
In 1887 Nikola Tesla competed with Edison’s direct current power with his offerings and patents for alternating current electricity. For several years the two battled over which would be considered The accepted form of electrical power. After some debate it was clear that AC (alternating current) was much safer and could reach much farther than direct current.
