THE HISTORY OF ELECRICAL ENGINEERING: THE LIFE BLOOD OF HUMANITY.

Electrical Engineering is the Best and most tasking Engineering courses in school: You must have heard this from people around. Now let's discuss that Electrical Engineering and know if it is really what you heard. HISTORY AND EVOLUTION OF ELECTRICAL ENGINEERING. Electrical Engineering is the field of study that focuses on the application of Electricity and Electromagnetism in our Everyday Life. It deals with the properties of Electricity and Magnetism Electrical Engineering have evolved and grown very exponentially that it now have numerous branches but we'll be looking into the 3 main branches of Electrical Engineering:1. Telecommunication.2. Power and Lighting.3. Computer Engineering.No one understood the principle of Electromagnetism not until an English Physicist named William Gilbert released his principal work named "De Magnet or "On the Magnet" in 1600.William Gilbert was the first to describe the phenomenon we now associate with Electrical Attraction and Magnetic poles. Hence the reason why many view him as the father of Electrical Studies. Stephen Gray later discovered Electrical Induction (The movement of Electrically charged particles through a transmission medium) in 1729.Now let's talk about the 3 main branches of Electrical Engineering (NOTE: Electrical Engineering have over 10 branches). TELECOMMUNICATION.Telecommunication is the first field of Electrical Engineering which was inspired by Stephen Gray's Electrical Induction Experiment of 1729.Efforts to communicate over long distances by things like the Semaphore were undertaken as early as 1700s. In 1837, Sir William Fothergill Cooke and Charles Wheatstone patented the first Electric Telegraph.Samuel Morse figured out how to use an electromagnet with a pen so that when the electromagnet was energized, the pen made a mark on paper and further developed a system called "DOS AND DASH" now generally and commonly known as "MORSE CODE" so that messages can be easily transmitted. He obtained financial support from Congress in 1844 and built the first Telegraph line in the United States of America which travelled between BALTIMORE and WASHINGTON and sent the first ever line message on May 24th 1844 "What hath GOD Wrought".After the first permanent underwater telecommunication line was laid across the Atlantic Ocean in 1866 by Britain, Engineers began making plans on trying to capture and transmit the human voice and achieved that by 1876 (exactly 10 years of planning and trying) with the invention of Telephone.The discovery of Electromagnetic waves by HENRY HERTZ in 1887 changed the equation of Telecommunication over a telegraph line when Engineers realized that these Electromagnetic waves can carry a signal by modifying their Wavelengths, Amplitudes, and Frequencies which led to the invention of Radio and the never ending confusion of who invented it.Electrical Engineers discovered that could create a visual broadcast (Television) along with the conversion of Light to Electrical Impulses by manipulating the Electromagnetic Signals. now let' discuss the second thing in the list of our 3 main branches of Electrical Engineer which happens to be my baby:POWER AND LIGHTING.In 1801, Sir Humphry Davy discovered that he could produce a brilliant spark or arc between two Carbon rods in battery circuit which is known today as THE ARC LIGHTING. But this could not support a higher power capacity which was later overtaken by the invention of GRAMME DYNAMO which supported a higher power capacity in 1870 by Belgian-Born Engineer named Zénobe-Théophile.While Arc Lighting kept showing up in the streets of different countries, Thomas Edison realized that the Arc Lighting could not be used in the homes due to it's high brightness which led to his development of the Incandescent Lamp. By capitalizing on the work of many other, his Incandescent Lighting systems were soon featured at popular exhibits such as the Paris-Lighting Exhibition in 1881 and The Crystal Palace in London. Edison quickly gained gained competition, most notably from George Westinghouse and Nikola Tesla which led to what is now remembered as the WAR OF CURRENTS having Westinghouse an Tesla as proponents of an Alternating (AC) current against Edison's Direct (DC) current where we have Edison doing his best to discredit AC by trying to convince the public that they (AC) were dangerous by having animals electrocuted by AC on public display, and even went as far recommending Electrocution as a death-penalty thereby alternating hanging prisoners and succeeded by having the first the first person named WILLIAM KEMMER who was a convicted murderer to be electrocuted to death in an electric chair in 1890. Despite all these, Edison still failed to discredit the AC.And by 1893, Westinghouse won the contract to supply Electricity to the 1893 world's fair in Chicago, and the Alternating (AC) Current have since become dominant in the Electric power industry. Now let's get to the third main branch of Electric Engineering.COMPUTER ENGINEERING.Before World War 2, most computers were part of what was called "RADIO ENGINEERING" whose primary role/work was in processing their signals of devices and they mostly focused on:1. RADIO.2. RADAR.EARLY TELEVISION.Computers only began to attract a broader audience after the development of the Point-Contact Transistor in 1947. The Point-Contact Transistor was a semi-conductor device that could amplify or switch electrical signals. It allowed Electrical Engineers to replace Vacuum Tubes which were bulky, unstable, and consumed too much powers.Despite the use of the Point-Contact Transistor, computers were pretty large because they needed a separate integrated chip for each one of their functions, but this problem was solved in 1968 by an American Engineer name Marcian Hoff who produced an universal processor ( the intel 4004, the world's first commercial microprocessor) that could be used by all computers.

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