Repository: UIHistories Project: Board of Trustees Minutes - 1884 [PAGE 24]

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28 rigid inspection before it can go forward to the Foundry. Thence the rough casting goes to the Machine shop, and receives such finishing, by such methods and with such tools, as the case may require. Thus the Sophomore class of 1879-80 have built the heavier parts of a large drill press. The standard of this machine is 84 inches high; its circular table 25 inches in diameter, swings on the main pillar, and is raised and lowered by rack motion; it will be adapted for automatic or hand feed; its spindle will have a quick return motion; it has the usual fast and loose pulleys and back gears for use in boring large openings. In all respects the machine will be first-class. Having furnished class instruction to the class of last year, it is nowr doing a similar service to the present class, which will finish it during the present term. When complete all the work upon it will have been done by the students of the University, except the cutting of the gears, for which the shop has, as yet, no suitable machinery. The building of a milling machine will furnish useful instruction to classes yet to come. The students of the higher classes have a greater proportion of theoretical work, which their practical training will the better enable them to appreciate and profit by, with drawing and as much construction as time will permit. The commercial work which comes to the shop gives paid employment to the older pupils, whose elementary and practical courses have prepared them for such work. There is usually as much such work as the students have time for. As in the other Schools, the time required to complete this full course is four years; the student taking, with the above, literary and scientific studies sufficient to keep him busily occupied during this time.

PHYSICS.

This subject is connected, in the professorship, with the foregoing; hence introduced in this place. The apparatus has cost about five thousand dollars. Much of it is adapted for investigation, rather than illustration. The room is over the chapel, and like it is 60 feet by 80 feet; a transverse partition divides it equally. The northern part is used as a lecture room, and is capable of seating 350 persons, if necessary. The southern room is the laboratory, a beautiful apartment, having abundant light from the east, south and west. In the center of this room a case for apparatus has been enclosed, 16 by 20 feet, the upper part being made useful by a gallery. This case is glazed on three sides; the lower part affords abundant opportunity for the display of pieces of interest, while the gallery gives place for many things not less useful, though less attractive. Between the apparatus room and the lecture room is a space designed, primarily, as an ante-room for the lecture room, and having its floor on a level with the lecture platform. This room communicates, both above and below, with the apparatus room in its rear, and by ample sliding doors with the lecture room in front. Even if the lecture room is occupied, preparation, may be made in the ante-room for a succeeding exercise, and at the time for change the required apparatus may be transferred in an instant, through the broad doorway. The