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SCIENCE 



[N. S. Vol. XXVI. No. 663 



operative chemists and practical naturalists prop- 

 erly qualified to act as teachers in villages and 

 school districts; having appointed an agent and 

 furnished him with funds for procuring apparatus 

 and fitting up laboratories and a library room, 

 etc., and the agent having given notice to the 

 president of the institution that the requisite col- 

 lections and preparations are completed, it seems 

 proper to give public notice of the circumstances. 

 Accordingly, the public is respectfully notified 

 that everything is in readiness at the Rensselaer 

 School for giving instruction in chemistry, experi- 

 mental philosophy and natural history, with their 

 applications to agriculture, domestic economy and 

 the arts, and also for teaching land surveying and 

 all the branches of learning set forth in the cir- 

 cular which was issued in November last, sub- 

 scribed by the founder and by the president and 

 secretary of the board of trustees. The first term 

 will commence, according to the appointment of 

 the founder, on the first Monday in January, 1825, 

 and continue fifteen weeks. 



An evening course by the senior professor in 

 chemistry and experimental philosophy will com- 

 mence on the third Wednesday in January and 

 continue, three lectures a week, for ten weeks. 

 (Signed) Samuel Biatchfoed 



Rensselaer School, December 28, 1824. 



And so the school was launched, to pro- 

 vide for the study of chemistry, experi- 

 mental philosophy and natural history 

 with their applications to agriculture, ^do- 

 mestic economy and the arts and for teach- 

 ing land surveying and other branches of 

 learning set forth in this circular. What 

 prophetic vision Van Rensselaer possessed ! 

 He saw among other things the importance 

 of liberal education to the life work of 

 every man, and so provided for, in addi- 

 tion to the professional or technical 

 branclies of study, training in other 

 branches of learning, presumably the cul- 

 ture studies, essential to the training of 

 every educated man. But note further, 

 that special provision was made first, for 

 the study of chemistry, then for the study 

 of experimental philosophy, or what we now 

 know as physics; and after that natural 

 history, or what we now class generally as 



biology. These three, chemistry, physics 

 and biology ; what better, could have, then 

 or now, been imagined for the broad train- 

 ing of one who should make a life work of 

 the essential arts of life? Van Eensselaer 

 had trouble also to sharply differentiate 

 between chemistry and physics and to give 

 one precedence over the other. For as 

 chemistry applied in the arts is chemical 

 technology, so physics applied in the arts, 

 in a large way, is engineering; and as the 

 dividing line between chemistry and phys- 

 ics is obscure, so, as Van Rensselaer, even 

 in his day, recognized, chemistry and engi- 

 neering must go hand in hand if progress 

 in the arts is to be assured. 



No better illustration of this is to be 

 found than appears around us here. We 

 stand to-day upon historic ground. Here 

 the great engineer Ericsson found his first 

 financial encouragement and support at 

 the hands of those captains of industry 

 and finance, Griswold and Winslow. En- 

 couraged and gaiided by these master 

 minds, Ericsson was able to complete the 

 historic Monitor and make the Avhite squad- 

 ron possible. Here was the cradle of the 

 Bessemer process, which made the steel in- 

 dustry of the United States possible and 

 enabled our country to develop the great 

 United States Steel Corporation and lead 

 the world in the manufacture of steel. 



There are those, doubtless, who wiU 

 question what I have just said regarding 

 the priority of Troy in the efiiective estab- 

 lishment of the Bessemer process for 

 manufacture of steel, but such high 

 authority as R. W. Hunt, one of the pio- 

 neers in the industry in this country, says 

 ("Life of Sir Henry Bessemer," Sibley 

 Journal of Engineering, 1904, 161) : 

 "Hence the honor of the first heat of 

 Bessemer steel in America belongs to the 

 Wyandotte Works." But he also said 

 (History of the Bessemer Steel Manufac- 



