The first people to call themselves electricians were magicians who used electricity as part of their shows. They date back to the time of Francis Hauksbee’s (1660-1713) demonstrations of static electricity in the first decade of the 18th century at the Royal Society in England.
Those electricians used the effects of static electricity to amaze and astonish their audiences.
Today electricians are still magicians as they are expected to conjure up miraculous works at insignificant cost, in a negative time scale.
An electrician is a tradesman or if you prefer a skilled person who has completed an indentured apprenticeship and achieved a minimum standard of technical education.
When electrical installations were first undertaken the electricians were in fact carpenters, the wires were of iron and uninsulated, the insulation was achieved by installing the wires in planks/blocks of timber which had grooves cut in them, the wires were then inserted into the grooves and a timber cap placed over the them, guess who cut the grooves and inserted the wires, yes it was a carpenter. An electrical installation at that time was basic in the extreme.
As electrical equipment developed and electrical installations became larger and more complex the trade of the modern electrician evolved.
An electrician is able to carry out all the general aspects of electrical installation, maintenance and production work, either alone or as part of a team and can due to the extensive training during his/her apprenticeship, providing it was a proper indentured apprenticeship and not an NVQ or college based training scheme, undertake specialised works with little additional training.
The modern apprenticeship described in the apprenticeship.gov.uk website is extremely difficult to understand, in other words the old system was easy and straight forward you learnt your trade by being taught by tradesmen and going to college one day a week to learn the calculations and regulations that pertain to an electrician. Now you need to be a lawyer to understand the website and an electronics whizz kid to navigate it. Because the trade has become paper qualification based the modern electrician believes advancement is by going to college to obtain additional qualifications, this is of course true, however a paper qualification does not automatically infer the ability to do the work qualified for, all chartered electrical engineers have paper qualifications!
Many installation electricians work in the construction industry; unfortunately in that industry in England today on large projects electricians are used as factory production line workers, instead of being given an area to install the complete electrical service they are given specific tasks. For example one team will install all the cable racking, another will install the cable tray, another the trunking, another the conduit, another the wiring in the trunking and conduit, another the connections and yet another team the testing of the circuits.
It is debatable as to whether this task based system is efficient there can be little to recommend it, and against it is the boredom and demeaning of the electricians involved. It is not possible to have pride in one's work when part of this production line system, and it is highly recommended to avoid the big sites where these techniques are used. Try to transfer to smaller sites where you do the complete job or a complete area of larger jobs, or get into maintenance.
Maintenance electricians carry out routine maintenance and testing on the electrical installation of a premises, that installation can range from repairing light fittings and replacing lamps to maintaining large production machines. Maintenance electricians respond to equipment breakdown calls to carry out emergency repairs. They also need to respond to accident calls in case equipment requires isolation.
Production electricians construct and test complex electrical equipment such as control panels, motor control centres and switchboards. Once the metalwork has been constructed electricians use layout drawings to install the electrical components and accessories; and wiring diagrams to install the wiring between the components and accessories.