Page images
PDF
EPUB

Rogers and his twenty associates were made a body corpoporate "for the purpose of instituting and maintaining a society of arts, a museum of arts and a school of industrial science." The latter has become the prominent feature of the institute. "It is devoted to the investigation and teaching of science as applied to the various engineering professions, namely, civil, mechanical, mining, electrical, chemical and sanitary engineering, and naval architecture, as well as to architecture, chemistry, metallurgy, biology, physics and geology. A course of a less technical nature, designed as a preparation for business callings, is also provided." There is also affiliated with it the Lowell school of practical design, established in 1872 by the trustee of the Lowell institute for the purpose of promoting industrial art in the United States. The course in this school covers three years of instruction in the art of design including technical manipulations; copying and variation of designs; original designs and the making of working designs.

The institute offers thirteen distinct courses, each of four years' duration, in civil engineering, mechanical engineering, mining engineering and metallurgy, architecture, chemistry, electrical engineering, biology, physics, general studies, chemical engineering, sanitary engineering, geology and naval architecture. It is amply equipped with laboratories, museums and libraries. Its officers of instruction number 136 in all departments. Students in all departments numbered 1171 in 1899, and the number of graduates from the beginning is nearly two thousand.

The institute is supported for the most part by the income from private endowments and from fees received from tuition. It receives, however, one-third of the income of the commonwealth of Massachusetts from the national land grant funds and subsequent national appropriations for land grant colleges. During the past two years it has received from private bequests something over one million dollars. It furnishes free tuition to forty students from the public schools of Massachusetts from which it is reimbursed by

legislative appropriation. Its government is vested in a corporation consisting of not more than fifty members, including the governor of the commonwealth, the chief justice of the supreme judicial court and the secretary of the state board of education. The corporators, excepting the ex-officiis members, hold office for life and vacancies are filled by the corporation. It confers the degree of bachelor of science on the completion of any of the regular courses of study and that of master of science for graduate courses of at least one year.

The Worcester polytechnic institute at Worcester, Massachusetts, was incorporated in May, 1865, only a few weeks after the Massachusetts institute of technology received its first class of fifteen students in rented rooms in Boston. In the latter part of 1864 Mr. John Boynton of Templeton, in Worcester county, a merchant who by thrift and economy had accumulated a considerable fortune, made known to Mr. David Whitcomb of Worcester, who had been his partner and was his most trusted friend, his desire to devote the major portion of his savings to the establishment of a school for training young men for industrial pursuits. He was wisely advised by Mr. Whitcomb, a man of rare sagacity, and Rev. Dr. Seth Sweetser, then pastor of the Central church of Worcester, was also consulted. It developed that a distinguished citizen of Worcester, Mr. Ichabod Washburn, the founder of the great Washburn & Moen steel and wire manufactory, long the leading establishment of its kind in the world, had about a year earlier confided to Dr. Sweetser his own desire to contribute towards the establishment of an institution of like nature. A conference, including among others the Hon. Emory Washburn, President Hill of Harvard university, the Hon. George F. Hoar and the Hon. Stephen Salisbury, resulted in a union of the two schemes, Mr. Washburn contributing the cost of the erection, equipment and endowment of extensive workshops, since known as the Washburn shops, to form a part of the means provided for the proper training of mechanical engineers.

Mr. Boynton's gift was $100,000. The citizens of Worcester undertook to provide for the erection of a suitable building upon a beautiful and convenient site given by Stephen Salisbury, who was also one of the most generous contributors to the building fund. It is interesting to note that many of the subscribers gave small sums, tradesmen and others uniting, to the number of about five hundred, to swell the amount. The corporation organized with the Hon. Stephen Salisbury as president, and in 1868 the first building, Boynton hall, was dedicated and the work of the school inaugurated. Its first president was Dr. Charles O. Thompson, a man most admirably fitted for the development of the new and somewhat novel plans of the trustees and donors. Dr. Thompson made a special study of European technical schools, particularly of the Russian schools, the imperial technical school at Moscow and the institute of technology at St. Petersburg.

In these schools the experiment was first made of combining in the engineering courses the study of text-books, lectures and other exercises long known to form a necessary part of scholastic training, with practical exercises in workshops in which the student was made familiar with machines, their construction and use, and the nature of the materials upon which they worked. Dr. Thompson was especially impressed with this plan as representing very closely the ideas of the founders of the Worcester polytechnic institute, and under his able direction it became the central idea about which the organization of the school crystallized. He remained at its head for fourteen years, during which it developed the distinctive qualities by which it has since been characterized. During the thirty years of its existence it has received numerous additions to its original funds, mostly from citizens of Worcester and especially from the Salisburys, including Stephen Salisbury 2d, the first president of the board of trustees, and Stephen Salisbury 3d, the present (1899) head of the corporation. As the school grew, and with it the demands of new methods of instruc

[ocr errors]

tion, several large and commodious buildings were added to the original, notably the Salisbury laboratories for physics. and chemistry, the gift of the present Stephen Salisbury; the engineering building, with its mechanical laboratories, erected by means of an appropriation by the state of Massachusetts of $100,000; the power laboratory, the hydraulic laboratory, etc. Perhaps the distinctive feature of the school is the large utilization of workshops in connection with instruction in mechanical and electrical engineering. The constructive principle is dominant in the workshop training, and the student during his course, or sometimes in conjunction with a small group of his fellows, actually produces all the parts of a tolerably complex machine, involving the use of a wide variety of machine tools and of materials used in construction. The excellence of his work or design is tested as an actual commercial product, which is held to be the final test, and to secure the best results the Washburn shops maintain a commercial side, the greater part of the output of which consists of special machines, appliances and devices originally designed and developed there, representing the results of actual engineering practice on the part of students and professors.

The institute offers five courses, each of four years duration, namely, mechanical engineering, civil engineering, chemistry (including sanitary and industrial chemistry), electrical engineering and general science. It grants the degree of bachelor of science to those who complete any one of its courses, and the master's degree for graduate study of not less than one year. Professional degrees of mechanical, civil and electrical engineering are granted upon conditions requiring still further work and several years of successful professional experience.

Its corps of instructors numbers 31 and its students (1899) 236. Its graduates number (1899) 823. Its support is derived from the income of its endowment and fees for tuition. It gives free tuition to forty students from the state of Massachusetts for which it is reimbursed by annual

appropriation from the state. It also furnishes free tuition to about thirty young men, residents of Worcester county, for which funds have been provided by donation. Its government is vested in a board of twelve trustees, one being appointed by the state board of education, and the mayor of the city of Worcester being a member ex-officio. Other members are chosen by the board and serve for life.

The Lehigh university, at South Bethlehem, Pennsylvania, although by name a university, is and has always been pre-eminently a technical or engineering college of a high grade. The original object of its founder was to afford the young men of the Lehigh valley a complete education, technical, literary and scientific, suitable to fit them for those professions represented in the development of the peculiar resources of the rich mining territory in which it is located.

In 1865 the Hon. Asa Packer signified his intention of providing such an institution by announcing his willingness to donate to it the sum of $500,000 and one hundred and fifteen acres of land in South Bethlehem on which the buildings might be placed. Judge Packer was born in Groton, Connecticut, in 1806, and died in Philadelphia in 1879. After receiving a common school education he began learning the trade of tanning, but gave it up to serve an apprenticeship as a carpenter. He worked at this trade for some time, but while still under twenty years of age, on the on the opening of the Lehigh Valley canal, he established himself at Mauch Chunk, becoming the owner and master of a canal boat for carrying coal to Philadelphia. Although entirely lacking preliminary training, he possessed the instincts of an engineer, and was soon extensively engaged in the building of locks and boats and in the mining and transportation of coal. He projected the Lehigh Valley railroad, and through his varied and extensive operations in mining and transporting coal became the richest man of his day in the state of Pennsylvania. He filled important political offices, was a member of congress and was the candidate of his party for governor of the state in 1869. He gave to the

« PreviousContinue »