Electronic engineering

Electronic engineering is a professional discipline that deals with the behavior and effects of electrons (as in electron tubes and transistors) and with electronic devices, systems, or equipment. The term now also covers a large part of electrical engineering degree courses as studied at most European universities. In the Americas and some other parts of the world, the term electrical engineer is used to describe a person doing the same work.

In many areas, electronic engineering is considered to be at the same level as electrical engineering, requiring that more general programmes be called electrical and electronic engineering (many UK universities have departments of Electronic and Electrical Engineering). Both define a broad field that encompasses many subfields including those that deal with power, instrumentation engineering, telecommunications, and semiconductor circuit design amongst many others.

Terminology

The name electrical engineering is still used to cover electronic engineering amongst some of the older (notably American) universities and graduates there are called electrical engineers.

Some people believe the term electrical engineer should be reserved for those having specialised in power and heavy current or high voltage engineering, while others believe that power is just one subset of electrical engineering (and indeed the term power engineering is used in that industry). Again, in recent years there has been a growth of new separate-entry degree courses such as information and communication engineering, often followed by academic departments of similar name.

History of electronic engineering

The modern discipline of electronic engineering was to a large extent born out of radio and television development and from the large amount of Second World War development of defence systems and weapons. In the interwar years, the subject was known as radio engineering and it was only in the late 1950s that the term electronic engineering started to emerge. In the UK, the subject of electronic engineering became distinct from electrical engineering as a university degree subject around 1960. Students of electronics and related subjects like radio and telecommunications before this time had to enroll in the electrical engineering department of the university as no university had departments of electronics. Electrical engineering was the nearest subject with which electronic engineering could be aligned, although the similarities in subjects covered (except mathematics and electromagnetism) lasted only for the first year of the three-year course.