RENSSELAER POLYTECHNIC INSTI tute (RPI), in Troy, New York, has a longer history than any other American engineering school. It was founded in 1824, when electricity was a parlor trick and canals were the latest thing in transportation. Little surprise, then, that RPI’s Web site has perhaps the most extensive history section of any engineering school’s, one that has just been augmented with page-bypage scans of five rare books on the institute’s history.
Among the five, which can be read at www.lib.rpi.edu/archives/ e-collections, is History of Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute, 1824-1934 , by Palmer C. Ricketts, which contains this quotation from an early prospectus: “Corporal exercise is not only necessary for the health of students, but for oualifvina them for the business of life. When such exercises are chosen by students they are not always judiciously selected. Such exercises as running, jumping, climbing, scuffling, and the like are calculated to detract from that dignity of deportment which becomes a man of science.” Instead of these “vulgarisms,” 1830s Rensselaer students beefed up their pecs by “watching the progress of agricultural operations [and] making experiments upon nutritious matters proper for vegetables in the experimental garden.”
Elsewhere at www.lib.rpi.edu/archives can be found information on some of RPI’s old student traditions, including the “calculus cremation,” in which a coffin containing textbooks was ceremoniously burned at the conclusion of the notoriously difficult course. The site also reveals that in 1915 freshmen were not allowed to wear corduroy trousers or trousers with cuffs, and they had to supply matches and cigarette papers to upperclassmen on request.
Among other technical schools, Georgia Tech’s site is predictably football-heavy and notes with pride that in 1961 it “became the first university in the Deep South to admit African American students without a court order.” The site also gives the history of George P. Burdell, a phantom enrollee created by a mischievous freshman in 1927 and kept alive by students ever since. Among his other feats, “In the spring of 1969, the first quarter of Tech’s computerized registration system, Burdell managed to enroll in every course offered—more than 3,000 hours. Ever thirsty for knowledge, Burdell replicated the feat in 1975 and 1980.”
Caltech is, as always, endearingly nerdy; what other school would have a listing on its home page giving the history of its home page? MIT is voluminous and bureaucratic: “The following chronology cannot hope to be a complete record of all housing related committees, studies, reports, and activities. The aim has been to emphasize the major reports and indicate other known relevant information.” And Carnegie Mellon’s site has by far the strongest Scottish flavor, noting that it is “the only school in the nation to offer a degree in bagpipe music.”
