electrical engineering, Branch of engineering concerned with the practical applications of electricity in all its forms, including those of electronics. Electrical engineering deals with electric light and power systems and apparatuses; electronics engineering deals with wire and radio communication, the stored-program electronic computer, radar, and automatic control systems. The first practical application of electricity was the telegraph, in 1837. Electrical engineering emerged as a discipline in 1864 when James Clerk Maxwell summarized the basic laws of electricity in mathematical form and predicted that radiation of electromagnetic energy would occur in a form that later became known as radio waves. The need for electrical engineers was not felt until the invention of the telephone (1876) and the incandescent lamp (1878).
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