The MOSFET made it possible to build high-density integrated circuit chips.

[44] Atalla first

proposed the concept of the MOS integrated circuit (MOS IC) chip in 1960, followed by Kahng in
1961.[37][60] The earliest experimental MOS IC chip to be fabricated was built by Fred Heiman and
Steven Hofstein at RCA Laboratories in 1962.[61] MOS technology enabled Moore's law,
the doubling of transistors on an IC chip every two years, predicted by Gordon Moore in
1965.[62] Silicon-gate MOS technology was developed by Federico Faggin at Fairchild in
1968.[63] Since then, the MOSFET has been the basic building block of modern
electronics.[45][64][65] The mass-production of silicon MOSFETs and MOS integrated circuit chips,
along with continuous MOSFET scaling miniaturization at an exponential pace (as predicted
by Moore's law), has since led to revolutionary changes in technology, economy, culture and
thinking.[66]
The Apollo program which culminated in landing astronauts on the Moon with Apollo 11 in 1969
was enabled by NASA's adoption of advances in semiconductor electronic technology, including
MOSFETs in the Interplanetary Monitoring Platform (IMP)[67][68] and silicon integrated circuit chips
in the Apollo Guidance Computer (AGC).[69]
The development of MOS integrated circuit technology in the 1960s led to the invention of
the microprocessor in the early 1970s.[70][51] The first single-chip microprocessor was the Intel
4004, released in 1971.[70] It began with the "Busicom Project"[71] as Masatoshi Shima's three-
chip CPU design in 1968,[72][71] before Sharp's Tadashi Sasaki conceived of a single-chip CPU
design, which he discussed with Busicom and Intel in 1968.[73] The Intel 4004 was then designed
and realized by Federico Faggin at Intel with his silicon-gate MOS technology,[70] along with
Intel's Marcian Hoff and Stanley Mazor and Busicom's Masatoshi Shima.[71] The microprocessor
led to the development of microcomputers and personal computers, and the microcomputer
revolution.

Subfields[edit]
Electrical engineering has many subdisciplines, the most common of which are listed below.
Although there are electrical engineers who focus exclusively on one of these subdisciplines,
many deal with a combination of them. Sometimes certain fields, such as electronic engineering
and computer engineering, are considered separate disciplines in their own right.

Power[edit]
Main article: Power engineering

Power pole

Power engineering deals with the generation, transmission, and distribution of electricity as well
as the design of a range of related devices.[74] These include transformers, electric
generators, electric motors, high voltage engineering, and power electronics. In many regions of
the world, governments maintain an electrical network called a power grid that connects a variety
of generators together with users of their energy. Users purchase electrical energy from the grid,
avoiding the costly exercise of having to generate their own. Power engineers may work on the
design and maintenance of the power grid as well as the power systems that connect to
it.[75] Such systems are called on-grid power systems and may supply the grid with additional
power, draw power from the grid, or do both. Power engineers may also work on systems that do
not connect to the grid, called off-grid power systems, which in some cases are preferable to on-
grid systems. The future includes Satellite controlled power systems, with feedback in real time
to prevent power surges and prevent blackouts.

Control[edit]
Main articles: Control engineering, Automatic control, and Control theory

Control systems play a critical role in spaceflight.

Control engineering focuses on the modeling of a diverse range of dynamic systems and the
design of controllers that will cause these systems to behave in the desired manner.[76] To
implement such controllers, electrical engineers may use electronic circuits, digital signal
processors, microcontrollers, and programmable logic controllers (PLCs). Control
engineering has a wide range of applications from the flight and propulsion systems
of commercial airliners to the cruise control present in many modern automobiles.[77] It also plays
an important role in industrial automation.
Control engineers often utilize feedback when designing control systems. For example, in
an automobile with cruise control the vehicle's speed is continuously monitored and fed back to
the system which adjusts the motor's power output accordingly. Where there is regular
feedback, control theory can be used to determine how the system responds to such feedback.[78]

Electronics[edit]
Main article: Electronic engineering

Electronic components

Electronic engineering involves the design and testing of electronic circuits that use the
properties of components such as resistors, capacitors, inductors, diodes, and transistors to
achieve a particular functionality.[75] The tuned circuit, which allows the user of a radio to filter out
all but a single station, is just one example of such a circuit. Another example to research is a
pneumatic signal conditioner.
Prior to the Second World War, the subject was commonly known as radio engineering and
basically was restricted to aspects of communications and radar, commercial radio, and early
television.[75] Later, in post-war years, as consumer devices began to be developed, the field grew
to include modern television, audio systems, computers, and microprocessors. In the mid-to-late
1950s, the term radio engineering gradually gave way to the name electronic engineering.
Before the invention of the integrated circuit in 1959,[79] electronic circuits were constructed from
discrete components that could be manipulated by humans. These discrete circuits consumed
much space and power and were limited in speed, although they are still common in some
applications. By contrast, integrated circuits packed a large number—often millions—of tiny
electrical components, mainly transistors,[80] into a small chip around the size of a coin. This
allowed for the powerful computers and other electronic devices we see today.

Microelectronics and nanoelectronics[edit]

Main articles: Microelectronics and Nanoelectronics

Microprocessor

Microelectronics engineering deals with the design and microfabrication of very small electronic
circuit components for use in an integrated circuit or sometimes for use on their own as a general
electronic component.[81] The most common microelectronic components
are semiconductor transistors, although all main electronic components
(resistors, capacitors etc.) can be created at a microscopic level.
Nanoelectronics is the further scaling of devices down to nanometer levels. Modern devices are
already in the nanometer regime, with below 100 nm processing having been standard since
around 2002.[82]
Microelectronic components are created by chemically fabricating wafers of semiconductors such
as silicon (at higher frequencies, compound semiconductors like gallium arsenide and indium
phosphide) to obtain the desired transport of electronic charge and control of current. The field of
microelectronics involves a significant amount of chemistry and material science and requires the
electronic engineer working in the field to have a very good working knowledge of the effects
of quantum mechanics.[83]

Signal processing[edit]
Main article: Signal processing

A Bayer filter on a CCD requires signal processing to get a red, green, and blue value at each pixel.
Signal processing deals with the analysis and manipulation of signals.[84] Signals can be
either analog, in which case the signal varies continuously according to the information, or digital,
in which case the signal varies according to a series of discrete values representing the
information. For analog signals, signal processing may involve the amplification and filtering of
audio signals for audio equipment or the modulation and demodulation of signals
for telecommunications. For digital signals, signal processing may involve the compression, error
detection and error correction of digitally sampled signals.[85]
Signal Processing is a very mathematically oriented and intensive area forming the core of digital
signal processing and it is rapidly expanding with new applications in every field of electrical
engineering such as communications, contr