Electrical engineering has to do with practical applica tions of electric energy. This includes electric power gene ration, distribution, and conversion. Electric energy has very valuable properties: it can easily be derived from other forms (mechanical, Chemical, etc.), transmitted with low losses for hundreds or even thousands of kilometers to homes and plants, distributed among users and converted back into mechanical, thermal, Chemical, and other necessary forms. Electricity makes it possible to utilize the inexpensive energy accumulated by Nature (energy of falling water), or to eut down its cost (such as when generated by burning peat or low-grade coal).
Used on a large scale in ail fields of national economy and everyday life, electricity promotes the introduction of advan- ced machinery and complex process mechanization and auto mation into industry. It has given life to new industrial processes, such as electric welding, electrolysis, and harde- ning by high-frequency currents. Owing to its abundance and low cost, electricity has provided novel approaches to many problems of industrial production and enabled many breakthroughs in science to become everyday practice and to raise labour productivity.
Electronics, which has now become a division of electrical engineering in its own right, considers the principles of operation, design and application of semiconductor, vacuum and gas-filled devices in science, various industries, and technology. For example, semiconductor and gas-filled rectifying devices are used in power engineering to convert alternating current to direct current for electric drives,
16 Introduction
electric traction, electrochemical and other production processes.
Without semiconductor, vacuum and gas-filled devices it would be impossible to effect process automation, that is, to regulate and control production processes.
Rapid advances in computer engineering hâve made it possible not only to raise the performance of automatic control Systems to a new level, but also to tackle nation- wide economie problems.
Electric and electronic devices for the generation, Processing, transmission and display of data are key elements of automated management and control Systems at any level.
Technologies hâve been developed by which a great num- ber of circuit components (diodes, transistors, resistors, capacitors, etc.) can now be made in the form of film micro circuits and assembled into sophisticated Systems. In the manufacture of these microcircuits, use is made of electron- beam and laser equipment. Electronics has found uses in the manufacture of superhigh-purity materials, such as tungsten, molybdenum, tantalum and niobium, essential to modem technology. It is obvious that a firm knowledge of the fundamentals of applied sciences, notably electrical
engineering and electronics, is essential to any one who wishes to gain insight into present-day technology.
Translated from the Russian by Alexander Kuznetsov
First published 1979
Revised from the 1977 Russian edition
French version
https://archive.org/details/v.-popov-s.-nikolaev-electrotechnique-generale-et-notions-delectronique-mir-1979
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