Elements, Systems, and Computation: A Five Year Experiment in Combining Networks, Digital Systems, and Numerical Techniques in the First Course

This paper discusses an experimental course developed at the Department of Electrical Engineering, Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Cambridge, during the last five years. Taught during the second year, the course introduces the student to electrical networks, continuous systems, combinational (logic) networks, finite-state machines, and some numerical methods. The material is taught through the common vehicle of the state model, and strives to give the student the necessary fundamentals for coping with the foreseeable future trends in electrical engineering.