Electrical & Electronic Engineering - History

The major activity in electrical engineering after the war was the development of the scanning electron microscope (SEM). Although the principles of the scanning electron microscope had already been established in Germany in the 1930s, there was a widely held belief that this technique had insufficient scientific merit and no commercial future. It was only through the determination of Charles Oatley, appointed to a lectureship in 1945, that research in this field was established at Cambridge. The first microscope was designed and built in the Department and it was operational in 1951.

Lord Alec Broers, Vice Chancellor of the University (1996-2003) and Head of the Engineering Department (1992-95) also researched in this area in the early 1960s. However his work was not on using the microscopes for visual observations, but on using them as a tool to scribe things. This was the pioneering work in nanotechnology that has led to the production of the now familiar miniature electronic circuits that are part of all of our lives today.