Repository: UIHistories Project: Board of Trustees Minutes - 1894 [PAGE 328]

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COLLEGE OF ENGINEERING.

329

THE HISTOEY OF THE COLLEGE OF ENGINEEEING. *

B Y I R A O. BAKER, Professor of Civil Engineering. We are gathered together to celebrate the beginning of a new era f01 the college of engineering of the University of Illinois. At the dawn of each new epoch there eomes the demand for the historian who*shall bring forth all t h a t is valuable or instructive in past experiences and show the trend of the history he traces. On behalf of the faculty of the college of engineering it is assigned to me to describe briefly the pathway by which we have reached a hill-top in t h e history of this institution and interpret for you, if I can, the prospects for its future progress. The work of the engineering college may be said to date from January. 1870, when Stillman W. Bobinson became professor of mechanical engineering. In the published proceeding of the board of trustees there is evidence t h a t the inaguration of the engineering department had received careful consideration by the regent and board. Reference is frequently made to a shop established almost as soon as instruction was started, but this shop occupied much the same relation to the University t h a t the farmer's tool-room does to the work of his farm. I t consisted of a few carpenter's tools in a small room cut off from a mule stable. The numerous reports of the regent and of the committees of the board show an earnest desire to do everything in their power to give instruction in the "mechanic arts," bnt there seems to have been no very definite conception as to the method of accomplishing this. Professor Bobinson was elected December 13, 1869 and entered upon his work January 1st following. Ten days thereafter he addressed a communication to the board of trustees in which he forcibly presented the reasons for uniting theoretical and practical instruction, outlined his method of accomplishing this, and asked for an appropriation of $2,000 for t h e purchase of certain tools and apparatus. The appropriation was promptly granted, the mules were driven out of the 24x36 building used as a shop and a stable, and the carpenters tools were moved to a second story added for t h a t purpose. A steam boiler, an engine lathe, a few tools, and the partly finished castings for a steam engine were purchased and the professor, with the help of his students, proceeded to make a steam engine which had some novel features to adapt it to experimental purposes. In less than six months the shop was supplied with a fair equipment nearly all of which was the product of the shop itself. Thus was opened the first distinctly educational shop in America. Seven years elapsed before another similar shop was opened in the United States, while now such instruction is offered at nearly all of the state institutions; and shops of a similar character, but of lower grades, are established in connection with the public schools of many cities. Viewed in the light of the experience of nearly a quarter of a century it is remarkable t h a t in the first attempt the true principles of instruction in the school shop should have been so clearly conceived and so wisely carried out. The credit for the general conception doubtless belongs tot h e regent, Dr. Gregory, and possibly in some measure also to members of t h e board of trustees, but Professor Bobinson should certainly have the credit for the details of the plan, and the clear preception of the principles to be observed.

* Read at the laying of the corner stone of Engineering Hall at the University of Illinois.