Branch of engineering concerned with the practical applications of electricity in all its forms, including those of electronics .
Electrical engineering deals with electric light and power systems and apparatuses; electronics engineering deals with wire and radio communication, the stored-program electronic computer , radar , and automatic control systems. The first practical application of electricity was the telegraph , in 1837. Electrical engineering emerged as a discipline in 1864 when James Clerk Maxwell summarized the basic laws of electricity in mathematical form and predicted that radiation of electromagnetic energy would occur in a form that later became known as radio waves. The need for electrical engineers was not felt until the invention of the telephone (1876) and the incandescent lamp (1878).