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National Resources Planning Board 



tradition.'" Nevertheless there were some men ready 

 to give of their wealth to establish such schools, for they 

 sensed the great possibilities of the future if only the 

 rapidly accumulating new knowledge could be made 

 available to those who would lind their work in indus- 

 trial enterprises. Stephen Van Rensselaer was one of 

 the first of these men. For generations his familj^ had 

 ruled over a vast feudal estate that included all the land 

 now comprising Albany, Columbia, and Rensselaer 

 counties. Although the family's estate was greatly 

 reduced and its baronial rights were lost upon the estab- 

 lishment of the colonial government during the Ameri- 

 can Revolution, there still remained a large property 

 which Stephen Van Rensselaer undertook to develop 

 after his graduation from Harvard College. He was 

 the first to propose a canal connecting the Hudson 

 river with the Great Lakes and, as chairman of the canal 

 commission, engaged Prof. Amos Eaton in 1821 to make 

 a geological survey of the proposed route of the canal 

 from Albany to Buffalo." The importance of the work 

 and the difficulty of finding men who were qualified to 

 conduct it so impressed Van Rensselaer that he was 

 convinced of the need for providing men with training in 

 science and technology. 



In 1824 Van Rensselaer wTote to Reverend Samuel 

 Blatchford : 



I have established a school in the north end of Troy, for the 

 purpose of instructing persons ... in the application of science 

 to the common purposes of life. My principal object is to 

 qualify teachers for instructing the sons and daughters of 

 farmers and mechanics ... in the application of experimental 

 chemistry, philosphy and natural history to agriculture, domestic 

 economy, the arts and manufactures.'- 



Professor Eaton, whose interest in science had taken 

 him to Yale to studj' with Benjamin Silliman and whose 

 ability for making popular presentations of scientific 

 discoveries had led Governor De Witt Clinton in 1818 

 to invite him to give a course of lectures before the mem- 

 bers of the New York legislature, was to hold the office 

 of "senior professor" and teach chemistry and experi- 

 mental philosophy.'^ Students were not to be taught 

 according to the us>ial method by seeing experiments 

 and hearing lectures, but by lecturing and experi- 

 menting in turn under the guidance of a competent 

 instructor. Thus by a term of labor, like apprentices 

 to a trade, they were to become operative chemists. '* 

 The Rensselaer School opened on January 3, 1825, and 

 for 17 years, under Professor Eaton's direction, it 



I" Butler, Nicholas Murray. Editor. EducatioD lu the Uuitcd States. McDden- 

 hall, T. C. Scicntiflc, technical and cneineering education. Albany, N. Y., 

 J. B. Lyon Co., 1900, Monograph No. 11, p. :). 



" Education in the United States, p. C. .See footnote 10. 



" Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute, BulUtin, 7 (March 1940). 



" Scicntiflc, technical and enginoering education, p. 7. Sw footnote 10. 



'< Sclentlflc, technical and engineering education, p. 8. Sec footnote lu. 



offered a year course of study. About 1850 the 

 emphasis was shifted to civil engineering, and the course 

 of study was lengthened to three years. 



The year 1 840-47 was an important one in the history 

 of education in the Uniteil States. The Yale Corpora- 

 tion resolved to organize a school of applied chemistry 

 and by their action founded what later came to be 

 called the Sheffield Scientific School in honor of its first 

 large donor, Joseph E. Sheffield, cotton merchant, 

 promoter of railroads and canals. That same year the 

 catalog of Harvard College carried the announcement; 



In the course of the winter of 1846-47, arrangements were 

 made by the government of the University for the organization 

 of an advanced School of Science and Literature — to be known 

 and de.-ignated as the Lawrence Scientific School in tlio Uni- 

 versity at Cambridge. 



■Like Sheffield, Abbott Lawrence was a successful mer- 

 chant and manufacturer interested in education and 

 willing to give money to provide a scientific training 

 which the existing departments of the University did not 

 offer. 



Also in 1846 William Barton Rogers, professor of 

 natural philosophy at the University of Virginia, wrote 

 to his brother Henry of his feeling about the idea of 

 establishing in Boston a Polytechnic Institution, 

 "whose true and only practicable object" should be 

 "the inculcation of all the scientific principles which 

 form the basis and explanation of (the arts)" and with 

 this a "full and methodical review of all their leading 

 processes and operations in connection with physical 

 laws." " Of all places in the world Rogers felt that 

 Boston was the one "most certain to derive the highest 

 benefits" from such an institution because of "the 

 Iviiowlcdgc seeking spirit and the hitellectual capabilities 

 of the commimity." He felt that in Boston "the 

 occupations and interests of the great mass of the people 

 were immediately connected with the applications of 

 physical science, and their quick intelligence had 

 ah'eady impressed them with just ideas of the value of 

 scientific teaching in their daily pursuits." " Although 

 Rogers never lost opportunity to advance his ideas and 

 plans for a Polytechnic Institute, it was 15 years 

 before Governor Andrew approved an "Act to Incorpo- 

 rate the Massachusetts Institute of Technology," one 

 branch of which was to be a School of Industrial Science 

 that woidd provide a "complete course of instruction 

 and training, suited to the various practical profes- 

 sions — and, at the same time, meet the more limited 

 aims of such as desire to secure a scientific preparation 

 for special industrial pursuits . . . having their founda- 



" Rogers, William Barton. Lite ami Icttirs of William Barton Rogers. Edited 

 by his wife. Boston, New York, Houghton Mimin and Co., 1896, vol. 1, p. 200. 

 '• Life and ietteis of William Barton Rogers. See footnote 15. 



