Fonds F2474 - Queen's University. Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering fonds

The study of electricity began at Queen's in 1894, with a special series of lectures and, as the calendar boasted, "demonstrations of this wonderful form of energy...on telegraphy, telephony, electric lighting, and the driving of machinery." Queen's first real specialist in electricity, L.W. Gill, arrived at the University in 1900, and is generally considered the founder of the Department of Electrical Engineering. Electrical studies have changed drastically since then, but the Department's late Victorian goal to study "electricity in all its variations" still holds. The Department now teaches and conducts research in such fields as communications, fibre-optics, micro-electronics, power and transportation, electromagnetism, biomedicine, and electronic signal and image processing. There are approximately 25 full-time faculty in the Department, which has been located, since 1987, in Walter Light Hall [named after one of the Department's most successful graduates, Walter Light, former CEO of Northern Telecom, and Chair of Queen's Board of Trustees (1985-1990)], and the Stewart-Pollack Wing of Fleming Hall. The Department is part of the Faculty of Applied Science.