Repository: UIHistories Project: Board of Trustees Minutes - 1950 [PAGE 1089]

EXTRACTED TEXT FROM PAGE:

io8o

BOARD OF TRUSTEES

[April 19

C O M P T R O L L E R S REPORT OF CONTRACTS (25) The Comptroller's report of contracts executed from March 1 to March 31, 1950 (see Appendix, page 1117). T h i s report w a s received for record. REMODELING OF PART OF PHYSICAL PLANT SERVICE BUILDING (26) One of the first-priority building needs recommended to the last General Assembly by the Board of Trustees was the remodeling for academic use of the old boiler room which forms part of the Physical Plant Service Building, the former power plant. This item was deleted from the list of capital appropriations finally made. The need for this space remains acute. It is particularly acute because the addition to the Physics Laboratory, also a first-priority building item, was not included in the capital appropriation. Because of this continuing need, the University Research Board and the Committee on Nonrecurring Appropriations have continued to seek for a way to remodel for academic use the well-located north campus space available in the old boiler room. On November 19, 1948 (Minutes, page 172), the Board of T r u s tees authorized the expenditure of up to $15,000 of the funds appropriated for the electronic digital computer, in connection with the preparation by Holabird and Root and Burgee of Chicago of plans for remodeling. The first set of plans prepared by the architects involved extensive and costly changes; these were studied and modified to reduce to the functional minimum the changes in the building and the total cost of the project. Mr. Briggs, the University's architectural consultant, has gone over the final plans and has reported to the Committee on Nonrecurring Expenditures that they are satisfactory. P r o fessor Huntington, the Chairman of the University's Building Program Committee, has also studied these plans and given his approval of them. Drawings and specifications have been prepared by the Physical Plant Department; these can be sent out at once with a call for bids, if the Board approves. Adequate housing of two major programs of graduate instruction and research will be provided by the proposed remodeling. T h e first of these is a developing program in the physics of the solid state. This is headed by Professor Frederick Seitz, one of the world's leading men in this important field. The fundamental work which he and his colleagues are carrying on is of immediate significance not only to the Department of Physics, but also to every other department of the College of Engineering, since the engineering properties of solid materials are of such wide concern. The other program which will be housed in the remodeled boiler room is that connected with the electronic digital computer. Three departments — Mathematics, Physics, and Electrical Engineering — are cooperating to carry this work forward, and the computing facilities which it will provide will be of important assistance to every department of the University engaged in work involving numbers. The borrowed space in which the computer project is now housed is already growing inadequate, and will be grossly inadequate when the computer itself is completed and placed in actual use, a few months from now. National attention has already been attracted by the rapid and healthy development of our computer program, and we wish to retain and improve our already strong position in this important field. The Committee on Nonrecurring Appropriations recommends that approval in principle be given to the project of remodeling for academic use the old boiler room in the Physical Plant Service Building, and that the Physical Plant Department be authorized to call for bids on the work involved. When these have been received and studied by the Physical Plant Department and the Committee on Nonrecurring Appropriations, the matter will again be brought to the Board of Trustees for final action. 1 concur.

On motion of Dr. Meyer, this recommendation was adopted.