page_title: Department of Electrical Engineering and Information Technology of TU Darmstadt
section_title: History
hierarchical_section_title: Department of Electrical Engineering and Information Technology of TU Darmstadt / History
caption_attribution_description: Deutsch: Professor Erasmus Kittler, Lehrstuhl für Elektrotechnik an der Technischen Hochschule Darmstadt, und Mitarbeiter. Rechts Michail Ossipowitsch Doliwo-Dobrowolski als Student in Darmstadt
context_page_description: The Department of Electrical Engineering and Information Technology is a department of the Technische Universität Darmstadt. It was the first faculty of electrical engineering in the world and offered the first course of study in electrical engineering.
  As of 2018, the Department of Electrical Engineering and Information Technology is one of the largest electrical engineering departments in Germany, with 29 professorships, around 250 scientific staff and around 2,400 students in 10 study courses.
  The history of the department is shaped by pioneers. Among the well-known graduates are for example John Tu, Kurt Heinrich Debus and Gerhard M. Sessler.
context_section_description: In 1882, the electrical engineering pioneer and physicist Erasmus Kittler was appointed to the world's first chair of electrical engineering. One year later, the Faculty of Electrical Engineering was founded at the Technische Universität Darmstadt and the world's first degree course in electrical engineering was offered. Among Kittler's first students were Mikhail Dolivo-Dobrovolsky, the inventor of three-phase electric power and three-phase motor, which lead to the Second Industrial Revolution, and Carl Hering, known for Hering's experiment.
  In 1899, the Electrotechnical Association was founded at the Technische Universität Darmstadt. Many companies emerged from this association.
  In 1907, Rudolf Goldschmidt developed the Goldschmidt alternator, which enabled the first radio transmission line between the USA and Germany. Later, he invented several inventions together with Albert Einstein, including hearing aids and loudspeakers. They received the patent for the construction of a loudspeaker in 1933.
  After Kittler retired from teaching in 1914, the Technische Universität Darmstadt awarded him an honorary doctorate and appointed Waldemar Petersen as his successor. Peterson established high voltage technology and invented a compensator for residual current in case of unintentional earth faults of an outer conductor, which is exhibited in the German Museum in Munich today. Later he became Director of AEG.
  In 1930, Hans Busch was appointed professor at the newly established Institute of Communications Engineering. He founded modern electron optics, thus laying the foundations for the electron microscope.
  Under the Nazi regime, the Faculty of Electrical Engineering and the Technische Universität Darmstadt were brought into line with the National Socialist dictatorship from 1933 to 1945. Under the impressions of the Bombing of Darmstadt in World War II one year later, the first International Conference on Engineering Education was held at TU Darmstadt, at which all participants in research and teaching committed themselves solely to peaceful purposes.
  In 1952, Karl Küpfmüller was appointed. He founded the system theory of electrical message transmission and thus made a significant contribution to the development of long-distance telephone traffic. In 1924 he established a relationship between the bandwidth and the duration of oscillation of signals, which later became known as Küpfmüller's uncertainty principle.
  
  From 1962 until 1974, Kurt H. Debus was the first director of the John F. Kennedy Space Center. During this time he was responsible for the launch of the Apollo program including the six moon landings Apollo 11 to Apollo 17. Apollo 13 was aborted prematurely. Under his leadership the following missions were accomplished: 1961 Alan Shepard, first American in space, 1962 John Glenn, first American to orbit the Earth, 1969 Neil Armstrong, first man on the moon and 1973 launch of the Skylab space laboratory.
  Robert Piloty, who was appointed to the field of message processing in 1964, had an great influence on the development of data technology and the establishment of computer science as an independent discipline. In 1968, Robert Piloty and Winfried Oppelt initiated the first computer science course in Germany at the Faculty of Electrical Engineering.
  In 1969, graduates of TH Darmstadt founded Software AG. Today it is one of the largest IT companies in Europe. Among the founders were Peter Pagé, electrical engineering graduate, and Peter Schnell, graduate of mathematics and physics. Schnell was chairman of Software AG for many years and today, with his Software AG Foundation, is one of the largest donors in Germany. One year later, billionaire John Tu completed his electrical engineering studies. He later founded Kingston Technology.
  In 1971, the Faculty of Electrical Engineering was divided into three departments: Electrical Power Engineering, Communications Engineering and Control and Data Engineering.
  In 1975, Gerhard Sessler, the developer of the foil electret microphone, was appointed to the Chair of Electroacoustics.
caption: Erasmus Kittler (center) in the circle of his students at the TH Darmstadt, about 1886
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