The College's Departments

During the second of these two decades (1880-1885) Professor Baker was assisted by Jerome Sondericker, assistant professor of engineering and mathematics. Upon Professor Sondericker's resignation in 1885, his place was taken by Arthur N. Talbot, who had graduated from the course in civil engineering in 1881 and had in this interval been employed in the west in railroad surveying construction, and maintenance. He was employed as assistant professor of civil engineering and continued in this department until June 1890, when he became professor of municipal and sanitary engineering and in charge also of the Department of Theoretical and Applied Mechanics. Professor Talbot's contributions to the development of the College are set forth elsewhere in this brochure.

Architecture was one of the four fields in which instruction was authorized by the trustees in 1867; but when Clifford N. Ricker, the first student in architecture, arrived on January 1,1870, he found that no instruction was yet provided in the technical subjects of that curriculum. Thus, he was therefore compelled to study privately, and among students the tradition ran that he selected his own subjects, taught himself, examined himself, and reported his own grades. He graduated in 1872, being then twenty-nine years old. After a year spent in practice and in travel in Europe he returned to the University in 1873 and was placed in charge of the Department of Architecture a position which he held continuously until June 1910; for the first year as assistant professor, and thereafter as professor. He at once arranged a four-year course in architecture, one of the three then available in the United States. The department, under his leadership, became one of the foremost in the country; its present excellent library is largely due to his unremitting zeal, for it was one of his main interests. No member of the faculty of the College has ever given to it his time and effort more unstintingly than Dr. Ricker, and none was a more untiring worker. Outside of his regular duties as a professor, he designed several of our existing University buildings and supervised their construction. Until 1890 his only assistant was the foreman of the carpenter shop. When he retired in 1916, Dr. Ricker had taught in the department for fortythree years and had directed its affairs for thirty-seven; and, in addition, had served the College as Dean for twenty-seven years.

Instruction in the last of the four original departments, Mining Engineering, was not begun until after 1871. It comprised courses in mining operations, taught by Prof. S. W. Robinson, and work in mineralogy and metallurgy in the Department of Chemistry. In 1885 this work was taken over by Theodore B. Comstock, then appointed professor of mining engineering and physics. He resigned in 1889 and was succeeded by Walter J. Baldwin. This department, however, did not attract a sufficient number of students to warrant its continuance, and the work was abandoned in 1893Ñto be revived however sixteen years later.

For the first eighteen years of these two decades the work in physics was carried on by the professors of mechanical and mining engineering. In 1889 this work was taken over by Samuel W. Stratton, a graduate of the University, who two years later was promoted to professor of physics in charge of the department and served until 1892 when he resigned to accept a position at the University of Chicago. He is given credit for initiating instruction in electrical engineering in 1890 and for establishing the first electrical engineering laboratory in 1891-92. Professor Stratton's ability is shown by the fact that in 1901 he was chosen as the first director of the National Bureau of Standards and in 1922 he was made president of Massachusetts Institute of Technology.