298 ROBERT HEYWOOD FERNALD 



conferred degrees upon the first two engineers graduated in 

 the United States. 



A few years later an effort toward engineering education 

 was made by Thomas Jefferson, and, although he was unable 

 to secure the carrying out of his plans, it is of interest to note 

 his advanced ideas upon this subject, for in 1818 he included 

 in an outline of the scope of higher education this expression : 

 "To harmonize and promote the interests of agriculture, man- 

 ufacturing, and commerce, and to enlighten our youth with 

 mathematical and physical sciences, which advance the arts, 

 and administer to the health, the subsistence, and comforts 

 of human life." 



In attempting to organize the University of Virginia, he 

 so planned that four of its ten courses should be scientific. 

 He spoke of it as a school of technical philosophy, and desired 

 instruction in the sciences of geometry, mechanics, statics, 

 hydrostatics, hydraulics, hydromechanics, navigation, astron- 

 omy, geography, optics, pneumatics, acoustics, physics, 

 chemistry, natural history, botany, mineralogy, and phar- 

 macy, and also in writing of his plans said: ''The use of tools, 

 too, in the manual arts is worthy of encouragement by facili- 

 tating to such as choose it an admission into the neighboring 

 workshops." 



So closely allied with engineering training are the schools 

 of manual training that the mention of the founding of the 

 early schools is of interest historically. Probably the first 

 institution of this class in the United States was organized 

 in 1833 at Penfield, Ga. It was conducted by the Baptist 

 church and was known as Mercer institute. Prof. J. J. Wil- 

 more, in writing of Some Phases of Engineering Education 

 in the South, adds in reference to Mercer institute: ''A 

 student at that time, writing many years afterward, feelingly 

 says: 'The work was on the farm. There was also a sort of 

 mechanical department. A preacher thirty years old, parrot- 

 toed, a carpenter — he bossed it. For a long time I worked 

 at the whipsaw.' " This institution was followed by Wake 

 Forest institute the next year. 



Not long after this a great advance in higher technical 

 education was made, for in 1840 Rensselaer Polytechnic 



