860 



SCIENCE. 



[N, S. Vol. XV. No. 387. 



schocls of the mechanic arts and of me- 

 chanical engineering, while the require- 

 ments of the rapidly growing industrial 

 system were certain to make an early and 

 imperative demand for professionally 

 trained mechanicians and engineers. This 

 prophecy was soon shown to be correct. 



President Morton took liis place as the 

 head of the new school in 1870, promptly 

 selected his faculty and organized the in- 

 stitution, in accordance with the accepted 

 plan, in 1871. Its success w.as instant 

 and the thirty-two years which have 

 elapsed since the foundation of the Stevens 

 Institute of Technology have seen steady 

 I)rogress in numbers and in quality of its 

 alumni, in the character and extent of its 

 curriculum and in the amount of fruitful 

 research and valuable engineering data ex- 

 perimentally obtained through the able 

 and unintermitted work of its faculty. It 

 promptly assumed and permanently re- 

 tained a place among leading professional 

 schools. 



The president set an admirable example 

 of enterprise and industry and his life, 

 from this time on, was one of great pro- 

 ductiveness. The administration of the 

 college, the prosecution of experimental 

 investigations and the studies compelled 

 by calls upon him for testimony in the 

 courts as an expert in the departments of 

 applied science, in which work he soon be- 

 came, as everywhere, distinguished, com- 

 pletely put an end to his public lectures 

 and reduced his authorship to a minimum. 

 The new institution, however, was always 

 a first consideration and he was always 

 i-eady to make any personal sacrifice to 

 insure its successful development. 



In the early days of this period, Morton 

 carried on his scientific researches as best 

 he could in the midst of the constant calls 

 of duty and the distractions of a busy life. 

 He studied the fluorescence and the ab- 

 sorption spectra of over eighty uranium 



salts, publishing results on both sides the 

 Atlantic. In 1873 he similarly studied the 

 petroleum products, anthracene, pyrene, 

 chrysene, and published valuable papers 

 regarding them in the years 1872 to 1874. 

 He discovered 'thallene,' and its modifica- 

 tion 'petrolucene'; which substances have 

 extraordinary fluorescent properties. His 

 inventiveness was illustrated in everything 

 undertaken by him; but one of his most 

 useful devices was Ins new form of pro- 

 jection lantern, permitting the exhibition 

 on the screen of a great variety of ex- 

 fieriments which, previously, could not be 

 satisfactorily displayed. This apparatus 

 greatly interested Professor Hoffman, who 

 visited the country a short time after its 

 production. He independently discovered 

 'flavopurpurin,' though himself crediting 

 Auerbach with its first production. It 

 proved, later, that Auerbach made 'isopur- 

 purin,' a mixture of anthrapurpurin and 

 flavopurpurin. The demands of expert 

 work led the young chemist and physicist 

 into many interesting and often important 

 researches, and his coolness, courage and 

 entire confidence in his plans and processes 

 were often strikingly exemplified, as by 

 his work in distillation of nitroglycerine 

 and in conducting investigations involving 

 the employment of steam at above twenty 

 atmospheres ' pressure. 



His expert work proved a lucrative as 

 well as an attractive and interesting field 

 for the display of his talents and, vastly 

 more important from his own point of 

 view, it gave him means for promoting the 

 success of his college of engineering. He 

 turned back into its treasury probably the 

 full equivalent of the salary of the presi- 

 dent, and never allowed an important op- 

 portunity to advance the work of the In- 

 stitute to pass for want of funds when he 

 could supply them. Besides many smaller 

 and often unnoticed contributions, he pro- 

 vided, in 1880, a new workshop ; in 1883 he 



