July 27> 1906.] 



SCIENCE. 



99 



railways was vigorously commenced or that 

 steam was availed of to any considerable 

 extent for motive power. Meantime and 

 from the first the cause of education had 

 never been neglected in New England, In 

 1636 the general court of Massachusetts 

 Bay, which met in September of that year, 

 appropriated £400 towards a 'school or 

 college,' and in 1638 John Harvard left 

 half of his property, amounting to about 

 £780, and all of his books, about 300 vol- 

 umes, to the institution which thereafter 

 was known as Harvard College. 



For many years, indeed as late as 1850, 

 the common school, the academies, high 

 schools and colleges were the only instru- 

 mentalities of education in this country. 



But it must not be thought that the need 

 for a different training had not been early 

 recognized. It was pointed out as early 

 as 1830 that instruction in natural science 

 could only be found in the colleges which 

 were designed to educate those who were 

 intended for the professional life of the 

 ministry, the bar and medicine, and regret 

 was expressed that no educational training 

 had been provided for those who proposed 

 to occupy themselves with practical affairs, 

 and it was pointed out that those who had 

 signalized themselves by making great in- 

 ventions had been self-educated men. The 

 inventive faculty of our people had already 

 been at work. John Fitch, Oliver Evans 

 and Robert Fulton had long since demon- 

 strated that steam was to be the great 

 motive force for land and water vehicles. 



Amos Whittemore had produced the 

 carding machine; Eli Whitney, a Wor- 

 cester County boy, had invented the cotton 

 gin. Thomas Blanchard, of Millbury, had 

 invented, among many other ingenious and 

 useful devices, a lathe for turning irregular 

 shapes. Erastus Bigelow, born in West 

 Boylston, invented, before he was fourteen, 

 a hand loom and machine for making 

 piping cords, and the first power loom for 



making counterpanes, coach lace, Brussels 

 and Wilton carpets and wire cloth, and 

 laid the foundation of the prosperity of 

 the neighboring town of Clinton, 



Elias Howe, of Spencer, invented the 

 sewing machine, and Morse had invented 

 the electric telegraph. 



In view of all these and scores of other 

 inventions, it is not surprising that the 

 attention of thoughtful men was directed 

 to the fact that the development of our 

 industrial enterprises was a matter of 

 prime importance to the prosperity of the 

 country, and that some special training 

 should be provided for those who were to 

 ^engage in such occupations. It is true that 

 under the patronage of our colleges, scien- 

 tific schools had been established through 

 the generosity of private individuals. 

 Abbot Lawrence, of Boston, founded the 

 Lawrence Scientific School of Cambridge 

 in 1848. Joseph E. Sheffield, of New 

 Haven, endowed the Sheffield Scientific 

 School of Tale in 1847, and Abiel Chan- 

 dler, of Walpole, N, H., endowed a separate 

 department of technology at Dartmouth in 

 1852. These schools, however, all taught 

 pure science. It was left for the poly- 

 technic school as later developed to teach 

 applied science. Such, in a general way, 

 were the conditions in 1860. 



July 2, 1862, Congress passed a bill 

 granting to each state 30,000 acres of land 

 for each senator and representative in 

 Congress for the purpose of endowing in- 

 stitutions for teaching such branches of 

 learning as are related to agriculture and 

 the mechanic arts, and this, too, at a time 

 when the failure of the peninsular cam- 

 paign against Richmond had left the people 

 of the country in a state of deep depression. 

 This gave a great impetus to the cause of 

 technical education. 



The Massachusetts Institute of Technol- 

 ogy was opened to students in 1865. 



