SKETCH OF THOMAS OORWIN MENDENHALL. 691 



corner of one of them, with the shawls of the girls, she showed 

 how an image of the big boys jumping from a " spring-board " 

 outside was projected on the roughly plastered ceiling. Such ex- 

 periments and illustrations made a great impression on him, as 

 they undoubtedly did on his fellow-students, and, we may assume, 

 produced lasting influences that varied in each according to the 

 bent of his mind. Young Mendenhall read also with great eager- 

 ness the small volume of Comstock's Natural Philosophy which 

 fell into his hands about this time, and was allowed to draw the 

 cuts of levers, pulleys, etc., on the blackboard at school. He ex- 

 perimented on the law of the lever when, with the other boy who 

 had been detailed with him for the duty, bringing water from a 

 distant spring to the school-house, the pail was carried between 

 the two on a stick. He had a taste for mechanical operations and 

 was something of an inventor, and was especially fond of mathe- 

 matical studies. Of the few books in the small family library 

 Chambers's Information for the People was his favorite, and he 

 read and reread it till he nearly knew it by heart. In astronomy 

 he made his first observation by means of a semicircle of wood 

 which he had roughly graduated and mounted in the meridian, 

 and on which the line of collimation was determined by two pins 

 at the extremities of the diameter. When about eleven years old 

 he made an unsuccessful trial of Foucault's experiment to prove 

 the rotation of the earth, of which he had read in a newspaper. 

 When it became necessary for him, at an early age, to care for 

 himself, he continued his studies at odd times as he found oppor- 

 tunity, still attending school as regularly as he could. Rainy 

 days on the farm were eagerly made use of for reading and study. 

 Studies in algebra were carried on while he was employed in a 

 saw-mill, and the problems were worked out on loose boards with 

 chalk. " More than to all other sources, however," Prof. Menden- 

 hall remarked, " I am indebted to the friendly advice, encourage- 

 ment, and assistance of teachers and others with whom I came in 

 contact. To be made to think that I could do something or had 

 done something by a word of kindness or congratulation was to 

 be helped along immensely." 



Remembering the waste of time, the discouraging, because 

 useless, difficulties of his youthful struggle, Prof. Mendenhall has 

 ever been a faithful advocate of bringing the highest education 

 and the best scientific culture within the reach of every seeker of 

 it. His proficiency in science soon developed itself in the perfect 

 form needful to one who would successfully teach. In 1873, on 

 the organization of the Ohio State University, he was elected to 

 the chair of Physics and Mechanics, which he held until 1878, 

 when he accepted the professorship of Physics in the Imperial 

 University of Japan at Tokio. While in Japan he organized a 



