EE specialties: Computers are pervasive: Solid-state and computer technologies underlie the shifting emphasis in technical disciplines

At the turn of the century, the major electrical engineering organization in the United States was the American Institute of Electrical Engineers (AIEE). The Institute of Radio Engineers, the IEEE's other predecessor society, did not yet exist. The membership of the AIEE, which had been founded 16 years earlier, included telegraph operators, inventors, utility-company and electrical-machinery-manufacturing executives, and college physics professors who developed the first rudimentary course in electrical engineering. Some of the AIEE's members called themselves electricians, with a meaning completely foreign to the present-day use of the word.