The First Electrical Engineering College

RE: The First Electrical Engineering College

gervasi — Mon, 25 Jul 2011 02:30:27 GMT

The transatlantic cable must have seemed a technically amazing as practical low-cost MIMO (e.g. as implemented in 802.11n) seems to me, but orders of magnitude more revolutionary.

On the part about modern unemployed engineers, I would comment that early engineers like Edison and Marconi were great business people. They did loads of trial-and-error, sometimes on things that scientists thought were impossible. (Physicists thought all RF propagated LOS only.) They worked at making science practical, and they were focused on the marketing and business side. People who came to work Edison's Menlo Park often were not paid. If they could use his resources to build something marketable, they'ld get a cut of it. Today we might call them unemployed. It's fine to be unemployed. If you create things that are worth more than the cost to build and market them well, you will earn good money regardless of whether you're employed at a "job".

RE: The First Electrical Engineering College

Former Member — Wed, 20 Jul 2011 03:34:56 GMT

Isaac Newton, no stranger to the entrepreneurial spirit, said it best: If I have seen further it is only by standing on the shoulders of giants. We take for granted what has gone before us. Thanks for giving us all this history lesson, and another one in humility.

RE: The First Electrical Engineering College

DAB — Wed, 20 Jul 2011 00:31:00 GMT

I agree that the first "academic" classes in Engineering are recent, but every scientist throughout history had to be a little bit of an engineer to conduct thier experiments. From the alchemists, wizards, and healers, every time they needed to implement a new technology, these inventive minds had to find some way to "build" the apparatus they needed to explore the next level of their scientific interests.

A good friend of mine, who has a PHD in Physics, told me when I was a budding lab technician that every scientist needed to know engineering and that every engineer needed to be part scientist if they were to succeed. Throughout the years I have found that his observations were very true.

In plain truth, many of us are driven by our desire to know more about how things work and test ourselves by trying to see what we can do next with the many interesting things available to us.

I do wish that engineers recieved more recognition and credit, but I know for myself, that I was more than happy to let the others do all of the public relations so that I could get back to playing with my toys.

So lets all raise a glass of our favorite brew to those who led the way and those who fought so hard to get Engineering acknowledged as a true separate and necessary discipline. The next neat device or service will most likely come from an engineer able to see the relationships between different technologies and requirements and come up with a cool way to tie them together.

Thanks,

DAB