Department

History


The Beginnings


The first suggestion for a course in electrical engineering at Columbia came in a letter from Thomas Edison to President Barnard. The year was 1882, and Edison's light bulb was just beginning to transform the nighttime activities of Lower Manhattan. This was also the year that Edison's first central electric station was established on Pearl Street. More widespread use of this source of power—for machinery, lights, and transportation—would require vigorous and enterprising young engineers who thoroughly understood electrical science. The term electrical science was coined by Michael Idvorsky Pupin, a professor in our deparment, in his autobiography. Referring to the claims of other scientific departments on the newly developing field, he states, "Crocker and I maintained that there is an 'electrical science' which is the real soul of electrical engineering." That emphasis on scientific foundation continues at Columbia to this day.

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Late 1800s: A Faculty of Two


Edison's suggestion, including the offer of a gift of equipment for a teaching museum, germinated for nearly a decade. The relevance of this new discipline to the science of physics and engineering taught in the School of Mines had to be weighed and evaluated. Further, with little precedent to guide the process, a decision on faculty composition had to be made and actual faculty candidates located. Would the best course be practical, or did the subject's scientific basis suggest a more theoretical approach?

In 1889, Columbia's trustees decided that there was to be a department of electrical engineering with a faculty of two. The course of instruction was to consist of the standard four-year mines curriculum plus two years of graduate study in electrical engineering. The first two faculty members were auspicious choices: Francis Bacon Crocker and Michael Idvorsky Pupin.

Crocker was the perfect choice to bring Columbia's department into the practical work of electrical industry. Prior to coming to Columbia, he had founded the Crocker-Wheeler Electric Motor Company, an early leader in electric machinery. Once at Columbia, he became a prominent figure in electrical engineering professional organizations, including a predecessor to today's Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers, and the American Institute of Electrical Engineers. He was among the AIEE's first presidents. Because of his industrial experience he understood keenly the role of standards in the growing use of electrical equipment, and chaired the first industrial standards committee. He was a Columbia graduate; the wide-ranging education he received broadened his professional outlook. After retirement, he contributed greatly to the U.S. defense effort, and was coinventor (and test pilot!) of the first helicopter. When Crocker died, Edison reportedly said, "His death removes one of the outstanding pioneers of the electrical industry."

Pupin, the second, and, initially, junior faculty member, represented another important contribution to electrical engineering—he was a physicist who was inspired by both fundamental science and practical invention. Pupin was also the first of a long line of immigrant scholars who have contributed immensely to Columbia's vitality and intellectual strength. Pupin arrived penniless in the U.S. from a small Serbian village, graduated from Columbia, and received graduate training in electricity and electromagnetism in England and Germany. He became an early proponent of AC power transmission (placing him at odds with established interest in DC), and later developed inductively loaded transmission lines, making possible long-distance telephone communications. The origin of the latter endeavor in its Columbia setting appears in a letter from Pupin to President Low requesting an introduction to Alexander Graham Bell during Bell's visit to Columbia in 1892. A more detailed letter, also to Low, explains the actual arrangement with the American Bell Telephone Company for a $1,000 experiment to test Pupin's ideas. Pupin served also as a mentor for the first graduate students—both Armstrong and Morecroft (see below) received their early inspiration from him. Later in his life he played a critical role in starting the National Research Council, as well as in developing medical imaging technology.
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Early 1900s: A Four-Year Program


A full four-year undergraduate course was instituted in 1892 for a degree in electrical engineering. Columbia benefited greatly from the excitement generated by the faculty and their accomplishments. By 1909, when Crocker retired from Columbia, the department had grown and prospered. From 1901 to 1904 the class size grew from five to thirty, and the faculty from two to four. The department, along with the entire engineering school, had moved to Morningside Heights. For the next sixty years, the Electrical Engineering Department was housed in what is now the Mathematics Building.

Pupin served briefly as department chair, before relinquishing this position to Walter Slichter in 1910. Thereafter Pupin's work at Columbia focused on his laboratory, the Marcellus Hartley Laboratory, located in the basement of Philosophy Hall. From this laboratory came some of Columbia's most lasting contributions to electrical engineering. Under Pupin's guidance his students created an entirely new technology in radio communications. back to top

The World Wars: Motors and Radio


Slichter's leadership of electrical engineering lasted until 1941. This era spanned the First World War and the emergence of radio as a communications and entertainment vehicle. The electrification of New York City was completed, and electrically powered industries dominated manufacturing. During the First World War the department played a critical role in giving the United States first-rate electrical technology. Virtually the entire department volunteered to teach in the Navy Submarine School in New London. Both Crocker and Pupin were effective senior consultants. Later, Edwin Howard Armstrong (see below) played a critical role in bringing radio communications to the army in France.

Throughout the Slichter era, the department evolved along two dominant technical tracks: electrical motors and power, and radio. Morton Arendt and Slichter, who trained at General Electric under Steinmetz, were masters of the art of designing and engineering electrical motors, and perhaps could be viewed as Crocker's successors. In radio communications, Armstrong and Morecroft were the dominant forces. Armstrong was the inventor par excellence, but it was Morecroft who first put the technology of radio on paper. In 1921, Morecroft published his ground-breaking book, The Principles of Radio Communications. Clearly, this area of departmental interest can be traced directly to Michael Pupin's deep involvement in electrodynamics. During World War Two, where mobile military communications made effective use of Armstrong's FM system, many students in the Navy V-12 program were taught by electrical engineering faculty, including Professor Morton Arendt, who was completing a long inventive and constructive career that featured variable-speed commutating pole DC motors, storage batteries, and other components used in modern diesel-electric submarine vessels.back to top

Armstrong and Radio Communications


Edwin Howard Armstrong was the most inventive of this talented group. In his full and vibrant life, he completely revolutionized radio communications; these innovations are listed in the attached table and show clearly the truth of the faculty's memorial resolution on the occasion of Armstrong's death: "The gift of a single outstanding invention has been granted to few men but it has been seldom indeed that is has been given to one man to add successively five such epoch-making advances as those of [Armstrong]."

Armstrong's life was typical of a driven creative genius. He worked intensely at his profession throughout his life, starting with the invention of the regenerative detector while still an undergraduate student, continuing with the super-regenerative and super-heterodyne circuits and wideband FM radio, and ending with FM multiplexing a few months before his death in 1954. During his lifetime he won many awards and numerous honorary degrees. The importance of his work drew him into contact with the other giants of radio and electronics, and, as may be expected, many of these interactions developed into rivalries, which spurred the profession but ultimately hurt Armstrong personally. Armstrong was also a dedicated, civic-minded individual who aided the U.S. in both world wars. He was honored by both the American and French governments for these contributions.

The following table summarizes the major milestones in Armstrong's career. For additional information about Armstrong's life and technical contributions, the reader can consult the article "Edwin Armstrong: Pioneer of the Airwaves," by Professor Yannis Tsividis (Columbia Magazine, Spring 2002).
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Edwin Howard Armstrong: Inventions and Major Honors


1912–13 Invention of the regenerative detector and the triode oscillator
1917
Medal of Honor, Institute of Radio Engineering
1917 Invention of the super-heterodyne receiver
1919
Chevalier de la Legion d'Honneur
1922
Invention of the super-regenerative circuit
1929
Doctor of Science, Columbia University
1933
Invention of wideband frequency modulation
1935
Armstrong Medal, Radio Club of America
1939 Egleston Medal, Columbia University
1940 Holly Medal, American Society of Mechanical Engineers
1940 Modern Pioneer Award, National Association of Manufacturing
1941 Doctor of Science, Muhlenberg University
1941 Medal, Class of 1889, School of Mines, Columbia University
1941 Franklin Medal, Franklin Institute
1942 Edison Medal, American Institute of Electrical Engineers
1947 Medal of Merit, United States of America with Presidential Citation
1948 Doctor of Science, L'Universite Laval
1950 Armstrong Medal, Radio Club of America
1953 Invention of FM multiplexing
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Postwar Period: The Golden Era of Systems and Control Theory


The 1950s and '60s saw an explosive postwar growth of students and faculty in the department and a strong surge of graduate instruction and doctoral research. Professor John R. Ragazzini, who joined the faculty after completing his doctorate at Columbia in 1941, chaired the department at mid-century after wartime research in UHF techniques, analog computers, and control systems. In 1945 Ragazzini and his colleagues had demonstrated an "operational amplifier," which later became an indispensable building block of electronic circuits. Motivated by the emergence of the digital computer, his seminal work on sampled-data systems and early digital control continued into the 1950s.
Professor Ralph J. Schwatz, later to become vice dean of the School of Engineering and Applied Science, began his affiliation with the department as a student in the 1940s and contributed continuously and effectively to all its activities throughout his career. Among the first group of Ph.D. recipients during the postwar period, Professor Schwartz (Ph.D., 1949) and Professor Lotfi A. Zadeh (Ph.D., 1949) were both encouraged by Professor Ragazzini. A new degree, the doctor of engineering science, was established in the engineering school, and in 1953 Eliahu I. Jury became its first recipient in the department. Working with Professor Jacob Millman, who joined the department in 1952, and with professors Schwarz and Zadeh, Ragazzini established an environment conducive to research and graduate education.

That period became a veritable "golden age" of activities in systems and controls at Columbia. Through research publications and textbooks, this faculty group and their doctoral students influenced the development of modern electrical engineering more than their number would have suggested. Much of today, "classical" theory of sampled-data control systems was developed at Columbia during the '50s. Pioneering textbooks by Millman in electronics, by Ragazzini, G. Franklin, and Jury in sampled-data controls, and by Schwartz and B. Friedland in linear systems, made the work of this group known throughout the world. Zadeh contributed more pioneering work in the area of time-varying and nonlinear systems, and R. E. Kalman produced his landmark work on optimal filtering and control in the early '60s. Franklin (Eng.Sg.D., 1955), Jury (Eng.Sc.D., 1953), Friedland (Ph.D., 1957), and Kalman (Eng.Sc.D., 1957) were all Ragazzini's students, so that the whole group were his intellectual offspring.
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The 1970s: The Modern Era Emerges


During this period, the transistor, digital electronics, and computers were rapidly enlarging the universe of the electrical engineer. The number and fields of expertise of the faculty grew correspondingly. While Columbia had become known in the '50s and '60s for its theoretical contributions, the '70s saw a return to the experimental aspects of electrical engineering. Research in solid state devices, plasma physics, millimeter waves, and integrated circuits assumed an important place in the department.

In the meantime, relations with industry, government, and other academic institutions were deepening and broadening, especially in connection with communications, electronics, modern radar engineering, and related fields. Adjunct faculty from industry made important contributions in instruction, and the department began to attract full-time senior faculty who had already distinguished themselves in industry. Two particularly important additions were S. A. Schelkunoff and W. R. Bennett, both of Bell Laboratories, who made very significant contributions in electromagnetic theory and communication theory, respectively. Bennett, one of the early researchers in digital data transmission, was a precursor of a renewed burst of activity in telecommunications in the department. This would later blossom in the 80's under the leadership of Professor Mischa Schwartz.

Throughout the '60s and '70s digital computer hardware and software and their associated disciplines and technologies produced waves of change in electrical engineering. In 1968 the department became Electrical Engineering and Computer Science; it provided a nucleus for a new department of computer science in 1979, following the creation of which the department reverted to its original name. By this time, the transition to the current epoch may be regarded as essentially complete.
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The Department Today


An important milestone in the more recent history of the department was the operation, over a 12-year period (1985–97), of the Center for Telecommunications Research. The center, funded by NSF and a large number of industrial partners, was originally created and led by Professor Mischa Schwartz. It performed fundamental as well as applied research on all aspects of high-speed communication systems and applications.

The department continues to make important contributions in core engineering areas, including communications and networking, signal processing, digital and analog integrated circuits, microelectronic devices, electromagnetics and plasma physics, and photonics.
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Teaching and Writing


The teaching activities of the department have produced an astonishing list of over seventy textbooks authored by the faculty since the days of Pupin. The tradition was inaugurated by Pupin himself, who wrote the Pulitzer prize-winning autobiography, From Immigrant to Inventor. Professors Jacob Millman and Mischa Schwartz are our stars with a combined total of 16 best-selling texts to their credit. Through these works, translated into eight foreign languages, our leadership has been extended to the world at large.
Throughout its history, Columbia's faculty has always been influential. At the turn of the century it was reputed to offer the best program in the country. In the more recent history, the most impressive testimony of all has come from our peers. In 1983, the centennial year of the Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers, a poll of the profession was taken to select an Electrical Engineering Centennial Hall of Fame to include the top ten technical contributors, industrial contributors and educators. Of the ten educators, three of them (more than at any other institution) were Columbia faculty: Pupin, Millman, and Schwartz. Appearing on the top of the list of ten all-time top technical contributors in a tie with William B. Shockley, the inventor of the transistor, was, of course, Edwin Howard Armstrong.
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