Repository: UIHistories Project: Dedication - Talbot Lab [PAGE 37]

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B I O G R A P H Y OF A R T H U R N E W E L L T A L B O T

ment, the ranking officer in the Cadet Corps, and entered into other student activities. In addition to these activities, he gave instruction in preparatory mathematics and in his senior year was a student assistant in Physics. The literary society was the major student activity during the time Talbot was a student. He took a prominent part in the Philomathean Society. The titles of his addresses to the Society covered a wide range of subjects. His Commencement Oration, delivered in June, 1881, was "A Defense of the Public Schools/' It cannot be doubted that his interest in student literary activities and the training he then received helped to develop the precision and clearness in speech and writing which has been one of his outstanding characteristics. After graduation in June, 1881, he went west and was for four years engaged in railroad location, construction, and maintenance in Colorado, New Mexico, Kansas, and Idaho. The nature of the experience and responsibilities was of the kind to develop a young man in the conduct of affairs. In September, 1885, he returned to the University of Illinois as Assistant Professor of Engineering and Mathematics and taught a wide range of subjects, which at different times included mathematics, surveying, engineering drawing, contracts and specifications, roads and pavements, railroad engineering, mechanics and materials, hydraulics, tunneling and explosives, water supply, and sewerage. In 1890 his title was made Professor of Municipal and Sanitary Engineering, in charge of Theoretical and Applied Mechanics. After the era of expansion in engineering schools began, mechanics and engineering materials absorbed his attention even more than sanitary engineering, and without a change in title the emphasis of his work continued to be placed on mechanics and materials. For more than forty years he moulded and inspired generations of young men and was a leader in the development and advances made in this growing engineering school Always he regarded teaching as the important part of his life work. He • 35 .