The Engineering Experiment Station

The chief credit for the conception and advocacy of this enterprise belongs to Dr. Lester Paige Breckenridge, who since September 1893 had been head of the Department of Mechanical Engineering. For several years he had tried to secure action of the federal Congress authorizing the establishment in engineering schools of experiment stations similar to those which, by congressional action, had been created in colleges of agriculture. Though he failed in this, the idea of establishing an engineering experiment station at the University of Illinois was kept alive. In December 1902, in its list of asking for legislative appropriations, the board of trustees asked, in a separate bill, for funds to enlarge the College of Engineering. Opportunity was given the engineering faculty to seek the assistance of alumni and the manufacturing and constructional interests of the State in support of such an appropriation. To the gratification of the University administration the Legislature recognized the needs of the College and in May 1903 passed the general bill with an item of $150,000 for the maintenance and extension of the engineering equipment. On the basis of a report, prepared after careful consideration by the heads of the engineering departments, Dr. Draper presented to the board of trustees a recommendation that a part of the $150,000 be used for the purchase of land, buildings, and equipment for undergraduate instruction. Further, he recommended that a State Engineering Experiment Station be established, and that the remainder of the appropriation ($77,000) be used for the purchase of apparatus having special reference to advanced work in engineering research and to experimentation in engineering problems, this research to be carried out by the regular departments. The recommendations of Dr. Draper were adopted by the board of trustees December 8, 1903, and the Engineering Experiment Station thus came into being. Throughout this time the leadership of Professor Breckenridge was an influential factor in the consummation of the whole project. From the beginning the aims of the Station have been to stimulate engineering research, to enrich engineering education, and to investigate problems of importance of the profession and to the manufacturing, railway, mining, and other industrial interests.

Professor Breckenridge became, appropriately, the first director of the Station and continued to direct its affairs until he resigned in 1909, to become professor of mechanical engineering at Yale University. Since that time the office and title of director has been held by the dean of the College. The control of the Station's activities is vested in an executive staff composed of the director, the heads of the engineering departments, and the professor of chemical engineering. The Station's work is conducted by a research staff of men who devote all, or nearly all, of their time to its investigations, and by various members of the teaching staff who are interested in and qualified for research. Supervisory control of the work is exercised by the members of the executive staff.

Some of the Station's work is carried out on the initiative of the members of its staff and by means of Station funds; much of it, on the other hand, is done in cooperation with professional and industrial agencies, which share the expense with the Station. The latter, however, under the terms of the standard agreement, retains full control of the investigations and the right to publish the results. These results are published in bulletins, circulars, and reprints, of which the numbers thus far issued are, respectively,300,31, and 11. These publications are distributed to nearly all countries, and some of them have been translated into a half dozen or more foreign languages. They are as much esteemed abroad as at home, and they have widely extended the reputation of the College. Of the first twenty Station bulletins, Professor Talbot is the author of six; and his skill as an investigator and precision as a writer did much to set the pace for the Station's publications.