Abstract :
At the turn of the century, the major electrical engineering organization in the United States was the American Institute of Electrical Engineers (AIEE). The Institute of Radio Engineers, the IEEE´s other predecessor society, did not yet exist. The membership of the AIEE, which had been founded 16 years earlier, included telegraph operators, inventors, utility-company and electrical-machinery-manufacturing executives, and college physics professors who developed the first rudimentary course in electrical engineering. Some of the AIEE´s members called themselves electricians, with a meaning completely foreign to the present-day use of the word.
