Repository: UIHistories Project: Board of Trustees Minutes - 1888 [PAGE 145]

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148

UNIVERSITY OF ILLINOIS.

not be as valuable at first as ordinary office draughtsmen, but they will be much superior in the end. I t will give a wider range of methods and practice, producing more accomplished draughtsmen. I t will also make the study more interesting, and will further obstruct the present tendency of students to try to make up this study outside the classes, during vacation, etc. I consider this improvement to be the one now most urgently required, and propose to prepare a series of plates during the next summer vacation, so that the new system may be introduced with the beginning of the next University year. 4. The Blue-Printing Laboratorg.—It is probable and is to be hoped that the professors in charge of the various schools of the college of engineering will eventually publish text-books for use in their technical classes. But this requires time, and for present use some mode of reproduction of the lectures is absolutely necessary, so as to save the time of the student and provide time for recitations and practical applications. I have carefully considered every process that has come to my knowledge, and have tried many, finding that all are hampered by special difficulties. The processes may be arranged in three general classes. 1. Printing from types or stereotype plates. This would be quite expensive, and each professor would be obliged to have it done at his own cost, recovering the outlay by selling copies to students, which would introduce financial relations between instructors and students, objectionable in many ways readily obvious, and would also require the use of a very considerable capital. 2. Processes making numerous copies of a single stencil, all made at one time. Less expensive;. copies are not usually very legible or durable, and the type-writer can not be used for making stencils in most processes. Additional copies require a new stencil. A professor would still have to pay the cost of making the copies and sell them to students. 3. Processes making copies at any time from the stencil. The stencils or negatives are furnished by the instructor, and are copied in a special laboratory where students purchase them, thus removing the chief objections to processes of the preceding classes. But three processes of this kind are probably available for our purpose: a. The Gallic-acid-iron process, which produces a positive print, requires an excellent quality of paper, is very slow in printing, so that copies are more costly than blue-prints, though easier for the eyes. These copies could not be sold to students at the present price of blue-prints. b. The blue-print process, which is the simplest of all that I have tried, though probably more expensive than some belonging to class 2, but more free from objections. Manuscript stencils print best, but type-written are most easily read. This process