The Ecole superieure de Telegraphie and the Beginnings of French Electrcal Engineerng Education

Organized in 1878, the Ecole sup??rieure de T??l??graphie (EST) became the first school in France to offer a program in electrical engineering. Although the founding of later French electrical engineering schools involved local governments, private enterprise, the universities, and even the French electrical engineering society, the EST was established by the state specifically for telegraph instruction. This paper examines the establishment of the EST as an extension of the French tradition of state engineering schools and notes the work of Georg Ohm, Gustave Kirchhoff, and Pierre Curie.