As at MIT and some other institutions, the origins of electrical engineering lay in physics departments, which were actively performing research on the generation of energetic electrical particles and beams under vacuum conditions and on the electromagnetism of James Clerk Maxwell. In 1892 Albert Pruden Carmen, a D.Sc. '85 from the College of New Jersey (later to be called Princeton University) joined the Physics Department as Professor of Electricity. While the "electricity" or the "electricity and magnetism" of the early electrical engineering curriculum generally came from the physics department, the courses in "motors," "electric power," "electric railroads," and "instruments" emerged from power concerns in mechanical engineering. Courses in Electrical Engineering were first announced under the Mechanical Engineering catalog in the 1892-93 Register of Courses, with the notation "Details will be announced later." In 1892-93 there were 25 undergraduates and 8 special students, but no graduate students in Electrical Engineering.

In 1893, one of Carmen's Princeton classmates, Frederic Auten Combs Perrine, also D.Sc. '85, joined the faculty as Stanford's first Professor of Electrical Engineering. Perrine came to Stanford following several years in the electrical industry. At first, Professor Perrine taught all electrical engineering courses with the aid of one lab assistant, and later electrical engineering was offered as one of six options within Mechanical Engineering. As an early indication of close ties with industry, the catalog carried an announcement of thanks to the various electrical manufacturing firms which had donated apparatus and supplies to the Department. The first Stanford degree in Electrical Engineering was a B.A. conferred at Stanford's Third Commencement in 1894. Seventeen B.A. degrees in EE were awarded in 1895. The Department first awarded the graduate Engineer degree in 1896.

Professor Perrine left by 1899 and activities in electrical engineering were very modest until 1905, when Harris Joseph Ryan arrived to take over as Professor and Head of Electrical Engineering. Ryan had received a degree in Mechanical Engineering from Cornell in 1887 and subsequently had been a business partner for one year with his Cornell colleague Dugald C. Jackson, who moved to MIT to head the EE Department in February 1907. Ryan had returned to Cornell in 1888 and progressed through the ranks to Professor of Electrical Engineering. His coming to Stanford was to mark the strengthening and growth of EE at Stanford. He remained Chair of the Stanford EE Department until his retirement in 1931 and led Stanford to a national leadership position in an important area of electrical engineering--transmission of electric power through high-voltage electrical networks. Ryan's research was important to the design of the transmission system for sending power from Boulder (now Hoover) Dam to the City of Los Angles.

The first Stanford PhD in Electrical Engineering was awarded in 1919 and it was the first PhD in any engineering discipline awarded at Stanford. In 1926, Stanford for the first time awarded an EE degree to a woman, Mabel Macferran, an MIT B.S. graduate.

Henry Harrison Henline joined the EE Department in 1917 and would initiate the Communications Laboratory in the fall of 1924. World War I altered the rhythm and character of teaching at Stanford. Numerous students and some faculty enlisted or were called to service. Some faculty taught at an Army training center "Camp Fremont," which was installed near the campus, in the southern part of Menlo Park. The academic calendar was changed from semesters to quarters in 1917.

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