Historical perspective for electrical engineering education

Engineering education as we know it is quite recent. Although engineers have been important for millenia, schools were not needed until the eighteenth century. Then France and Germany began to train engineers on the university level. In the early nineteenth century, the ideas and methods of those countries were introduced by the United States in institutes of technology. Soon after the middle of the nineteenth century, the German plans for technical education began to be grafted onto our literary universities, which had largely followed the English model. American activity was heightened by the Land Grant Act passed by Congress and signed by Lincoln in 1862. Specialization within engineering had led to a separation of mechanical engineering from "civil" soon after the development of the steam engine. Electrical engineers split from mechanical engineers in the late nineteenth century. College curricula appeared and the AIEE was organized. The concepts of electricity held by such men as Faraday, Henry, and Maxwell are traced through the centuries. Henry's telegraph was followed by lights, motors, and generators. After Thompson's discovery of electrons, the thermionic valve and the audion appeared. The IRE was formed, and the "electronics" options appeared in college curricula. Both World Wars led to growths of technology which were rapidly absorbed into peacetime developments. Expansion continues. The AIEE and the IRE merged into the IEEE, indicating an interdependence, and the undergraduate college curricula show the same unity of concept between electrical power and information systems. Postgraduate curricula, on the other hand, show continually greater specialization. For the future, a general culture will surely require education in science and its applications. We must continue to train the practitioners of engineering, and in addition we must help educate all serious students. This double responsibility lies before us.