AUGUST 19, 1898.] 



SCIENCE. 



205 



of this famous school upon Porter and 

 Horsford has been ah-eady noted; the indi- 

 rect influence, in all directions, must have 

 been far greater. 



Physical laboratories were yet unknown 

 for some j'ears, probably because tlie sepa- 

 ration between chemistry and physics had 

 not yet definitely taken place. The treat- 

 ment of heat and electricity in the older 

 text-books of chemistry, as agents of 

 chemical change, tended to hold the two 

 departments together, and in some large 

 institutions, as, for example, the University 

 of Michigan, these important portions of 

 physics were, for nearly forty years after 

 the period we are discussing, under the 

 control of the department of chemistry. 



As laboratory teaching in chemistry is 

 connected with Liebig, so systematic la- 

 boratory work in physics is associated with 

 the name of Kohlrausch, whose Leitfaden, 

 still a standard work of reference, was the 

 first practical text-book on that subject. 



Professor W. B. Eogers appears to have 

 made the suggestion which led to the es- 

 tablishment of the earliest physical labora- 

 tory in this country at the Massachusetts 

 Institute of Technology, and Professor 

 Pickering's Physical Manipulation opened 

 the way for the ever-increasing Iiost of 

 laboratory manuals in physics. 



It will be seen from the above sketch 

 that the great incentive to the founding of 

 scientific schools in this country was the 

 growing appreciation of the value of applied 

 chemistry in arts and manufactures. 



Of general interest in pure science, at least 

 chemical and physical, there was little or 

 none; but the recognition of the value of 

 applied science led, within a few years, to 

 the great company of technical and en- 

 gineering schools which have been, until 

 very lately, the most imposing feature in 

 our American system of higher education. 



First among these, by many years, was 

 the Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute, of 



Troy, New York, the early history of which 

 merits some attention. It was founded 

 in 1824, by Stephen Van Rensselaer, and 

 practically placed under the charge of his 

 protege, Amos Eaton. The purpose of the 

 school was defined by the founder to be the 

 instruction of ' persons who may choose to 

 appljr themselves in the applications of 

 science to the common purposes of life.' 

 " My principal object," he adds, " is to 

 qualify teachers for instructing the sons and 

 daughters of farmers and mechanics, by 

 lectures or otherwise, in the applications 

 of experimental chemistry, philosophy and 

 natural history to agriculture, domestic 

 economy, the arts and manufactures." 



Professor Eaton gave to this philan- 

 thropic idea a turn of great originality and 

 value. Since he was to educate chiefly lec- 

 turers, they should learn to lecture at the 

 school. Since they were to lecture on the 

 applications of science, they should them- 

 selves become practical manipulators. The 

 work, therefore, of the classes consisted 

 largely " of experiments in chemistry, per- 

 formed by themselves, and in giving ex- 

 planations, or the rationale of the experi- 

 ments * * * ; the students thus them- 

 selves acting as lecturers, and the professors 

 as students." Laboratory methods, in fact, 

 were used throughout, and the school was 

 equipped, so far as possible, with this idea 

 in view. Doubtless the work was not so 

 well systematized as in Liebig's laboratory, 

 opened several years later, but it was an 

 original and independent movement in the 

 same direction, and that it was efiicient 

 may be inferred from the number of well- 

 known men of science who were gradu- 

 ates of this school. Slowly, in response to 

 popular demand, the Rensselaer Institute 

 turned more and more toward engineering, 

 and it is a curious fact that the very epoch 

 which beheld other institutions broadening 

 their scientific courses saw this one,in the re- 

 organization of 1849-50, contracting its field 



