The first cable, laid in the last century, could transmit four words per minute. The last, laid in the past few years, has three optical fibers, each capable of simultaneously transmitting 38,000 telephone conversations. The engineer, and especially the electrical engineer, has been on the cutting edge of this progress since the industrial revolution. New revolutions are happening in our own lifetime. Digital technology based on the development, by electrical engineers, of extremely powerful and novel semiconductor devices is even today changing the fabric of our lives.
Electrical engineers function in a large number of technical areas.
Charles P. Steinmetz, the father of electrical engineering, helped develop motors, generators and transformers which became the foundation of the electric power generation and distribution industry. Even this most traditional technology has been revolutionized in recent years by the development of nuclear power and extremely high voltage distribution systems. It can tell you of fundamental changes in the way things are manufactured with little human labor. Almost every technical area in electrical engineering is constantly changing as engineers learn to apply new scientific discoveries in new and novel ways. Even as you read this, scientists and electrical engineers are struggling to use recent discoveries of high temperature superconductors in extremely efficient electrical power systems and in extremely fast computers.