The Arthur Newell Talbot Laboratory

The use of the laboratory as a means of teaching is a relatively new idea in engineering instruction. Regarded with suspicion when it was first introduced in a small way about 1870, it rapidly proved its worth as a teaching method. Over fifty years ago, using homemade equipment and devising his own methods, Professor Talbot began to give instruction in laboratory work in materials and hydraulics. Fifteen years after the beginning of this work the Laboratory of Applied Mechanics was built, and in it Professor Talbot, together with his students and his associates, directed and carried out a large amount of important work, much of it pioneer in character, in applied mechanics. This teaching and the related investigations became so extensive and diversified that, within ten years, the confines of the Laboratory of Applied Mechanics were outgrown and the work spread into other buildings. Finally, in 1929, three years after Professor Talbot, by reason of age limitations, had retired from active service in the University, there was built the large, well-equipped laboratory now being renamed.

This building, which provides space for the Department of Theoretical and Applied Mechanics and a part of the work of the Department of Civil Engineering, is four stories in height, built in the form of an H with two wings 187 by 50 feet, and a stem 110 by 92 feet. It is equipped with a 10-ton traveling crane and with a great variety of testing equipment, including testing machines with capacities ranging from 45 pounds to 3,000,000 pounds.

East face of the new Materials Testing Laboratory, 1930.

Although only eight years old, this building is already crowded almost to capacity with undergraduate student instruction, with advanced graduate work, and with research investigations ranging from those carried on by instructors in their spare time to those occupying the full time of twenty to thirty men. Like the work carried on in the old Laboratory of Applied Mechanics, the activities in the Arthur Newell Talbot Laboratory continue to foster an educational and research program. This program has in view three purposes: to promote and advance new knowledge; to educate and train graduate students in the methods of conducting research; and, finally and most important, to teach and develop undergraduate students. Here the undergraduate student sees for himself new knowledge in the making and he is encouraged in his regular courses in mechanics, materials, and hydraulics to enter into the investigation of problems. These investigations serve to broaden his horizon, to stimulate self- reliance, and to cultivate initiative. In addition to the enriching effect of this investigational work on the professional attitude of the student, the facilities available also permit experiments to be made in methods of laboratory teaching. These experimental studies are needed in order to keep laboratory teaching abreast of other improvements in teaching, and of the progress in engineering itself.

Among the investigations now underway are those dealing with problems in hydraulics, with the production of gas from sewage, the stresses in railroad track, the cause of transverse fissures in rails, the welding of railroad rails, the distribution of concentrated loads on reinforced concrete slabs, the strength of rigid frames of reinforced concrete, the properties of low-alloy high-strength steels, the creep of metals at elevated temperatures, and the effect of repeated stress on various steels and alloys, as well as on full- size structural members and welded and riveted pints.

Inspired by the traditions of its predecessor it is expected that the Arthur Newell Talbot Laboratory will continue to contribute to the discovery and formulation of new ideas and to the development of students who, possessed of effective knowledge and initiative, will advance the science of engineering. These students will aid their profession and society in general by applying the basic principles of the science of mechanics to the solution of problems in industry and engineering practice.

The College's First Deans -- Biography of Arthur Newell Talbot
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