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The history of electronic engineering is a long one. ''Chambers Twentieth Century Dictionary'' (1972) defines electronics as "The science and technology of the conduction of electricity in a vacuum, a gas, or a semiconductor, and devices based thereon".〔''Chambers Twentieth Century Dictionary'', W & R Chambers, Edinburgh, 1972, page 417, ISBN 055010206X〕 Electronic engineering as a profession sprang from technological improvements in the telegraph industry during the late 19th century and in the radio and telephone industries during the early 20th century. People gravitated to radio, attracted by the technical fascination it inspired, first in receiving and then in transmitting. Many who went into broadcasting in the 1920s had become "amateurs" in the period before World War I.〔Erik Barnouw ''A Tower in Babel'', p. 28, Oxford University Press US, 1966 ISBN 978-0195004748〕 The modern discipline of electronic engineering was to a large extent born out of telephone-, radio-, and television-equipment development and the large amount of electronic-systems development during World War II of radar, sonar, communication systems, and advanced munitions and weapon systems. In the interwar years, the subject was known as radio engineering. The word ''electronics'' began to be used in the 1940s In the late 1950s the term ''electronic engineering'' started to emerge. The electronic laboratories (Bell Labs in the United States for instance) created and subsidized by large corporations in the industries of radio, television, and telephone equipment, began churning out a series of electronic advances. In 1948 came the transistor and in 1960 the integrated circuit, which would revolutionize the electronic industry.〔 Daniel Todd ''The World Electronics Industry'', p. 55, Taylor & Francis, 1990 ISBN 978-0415024976〕 In the UK, the subject of electronic engineering became distinct from electrical engineering as a university-degree subject around 1960. (Before this time, students of electronics and related subjects like radio and telecommunications 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 three-year courses.) Electronic engineering (even before it acquired the name) facilitated the development of many technologies including wireless telegraphy, radio, television, radar, computers and microprocessors. ==Wireless telegraphy and radio== (詳細はwireless telegraphy were invented before 1900. These include the spark-gap transmitter and the coherer with early demonstrations and published findings by David Edward Hughes (1880)〔Prof. D. E. Hughes' Research in Wireless Telegraphy, The Electrician, Volume 43, 1899, pages 35, 40-41, 93, 143-144, 167, 217, 401, 403, 767〕 and Heinrich Rudolf Hertz (1887 to 1890)〔Massie, W. W., & Underhill, C. R. (1911). Wireless telegraphy and telephony popularly explained. New York: D. Van Nostrand〕 and further additions to the field by Édouard Branly, Nikola Tesla, Oliver Lodge, Jagadish Chandra Bose, and Ferdinand Braun. In 1896, Guglielmo Marconi went on to develop a practical and widely used radio system.〔Bryan H. Bunch/Alexander Hellemans ''The History of Science and Technology'', p. 436, Houghton Mifflin Harcourt, 2004 ISBN 978-0618221233〕〔(Wireless TelegraphyProceedings of the Institute of Radio Engineers ) pp. 101-5〕 In 1904, John Ambrose Fleming, the first professor of electrical Engineering at University College London, invented the first radio tube, the diode. Then, in 1906, Robert von Lieben and Lee De Forest independently developed the amplifier tube, called the triode. Electronics is often considered to have begun with the invention of the triode. Within 10 years, the device was used in radio transmitters and receivers as well as systems for long distance telephone calls. The invention of the triode amplifier, generator, and detector made audio communication by radio practical. (Reginald Fessenden's 1906 transmissions used an electro-mechanical alternator.) In 1912, Edwin H. Armstrong invented the regenerative feedback amplifier and oscillator; he also invented the superheterodyne radio receiver and could be considered the father of modern radio.〔Paul J. Nahin ''The Science of Radio'', pp. xxxv-vi, Springer, 2001 ISBN 978-0387951508〕 The first known radio news program was broadcast 31 August 1920 by station 8MK, the unlicensed predecessor of WWJ (AM) in Detroit, Michigan. Regular wireless broadcasts for entertainment commenced in 1922 from the Marconi Research Centre at Writtle near Chelmsford, England. The station was known as 2MT and was followed by 2LO, broadcasting from Strand, London. While some early radios used some type of amplification through electric current or battery, through the mid-1920s the most common type of receiver was the crystal set. In the 1920s, amplifying vacuum tubes revolutionized both radio receivers and transmitters. Vacuum tubes remained the preferred amplifying device for 40 years, until researchers working for William Shockley at Bell Labs invented the transistor in 1947. In the following years, transistors made small portable radios, or transistor radios, possible as well as allowing more powerful mainframe computers to be built. Transistors were smaller and required lower voltages than vacuum tubes to work. Before the invention of the integrated circuit in 1959, electronic circuits were constructed from discrete components that could be manipulated by hand. These non-integrated circuits consumed much space and power, were prone to failure and were limited in speed although they are still common in simple applications. By contrast, integrated circuits packed a large number — often millions — of tiny electrical components, mainly transistors, into a small chip around the size of a coin.〔David A. Hodges/Horace G. Jackson/Resve A. Saleh ''Analysis and Design of Digital Integrated Circuits'', p. 2, McGraw-Hill Professional, 2003 ISBN 978-0072283655〕 抄文引用元・出典: フリー百科事典『 ウィキペディア（Wikipedia）』 ■ウィキペディアで「History of electronic engineering」の詳細全文を読む スポンサード リンク
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