Engineers, Businessmen, and the Academy: The Beginnings of Sponsored Research at the University of Michigan

Abstract

Engineers, Businessmen, and the Academy: The Beginnings of Sponsored Research at the University of Michigan JOHN W . SERVOS The Department of Engineering Research of the University of Michigan opened for business in October 1920, lacking a regular faculty, courses, students, or building. Its budget, just a promise of $10,000 a year from the university, was modest even in those days of ten-cent meals. It did have plenty of supervision—from a depart­ ment head, an administrative committee composed of the dean of engineering and the heads of all other engineering departments, an advisory board of one hundred Michigan businessmen, and the university’s vigilant president and regents, a group that, while over­ seeing a large and complex university, retainedjurisdiction over the new department’s policies and much of its month-to-month busi­ ness. Today we might call this department an office of sponsored re­ search. It was set up to undertake investigations for cost-paying cli­ ents, both business firms and government agencies. Topics would be specified by the sponsor, staffwould be supplied by the university, and any intellectual property that resulted would be distributed by prearranged agreement. In 1920, however, the convenient term “sponsored research” was not in common use, and the very idea that a university should undertake investigations for business firms on a regular basis was sufficiently novel to excite controversy. The uncertainties connected with bringing a university, especially a state university, into an open partnership with private interests helps ex­ plain the complexity of the new department’s superstructure. All Dr. Servos is professor of history at Amherst College. He thanks Hugh Hawkins, Larry Owens, Stuart W. Leslie, and a Technology and Culture referee for useful sugges­ tions on an earlier draft of this article. The staff of the Bentley Historical Library at the University of Michigan provided expert and friendly guidance to its large archival holdings. Work at the Bentley Library was supported by grant DIR-8922464 from the National Science Foundation.© 1996 by the Society for the History of Technology. All rights reserved. 0040-165X/96/3704-002$01.00 721 722 John W. Servos parties—engineers, regents, businessmen—saw opportunities and risks; all wanted some role in governance, at least at the outset. Novel as it was, precedents for such an enterprise could be found both at Ann Arbor and elsewhere. Many professors, especially in en­ gineering, were active consultants to private industry, although uni­ versities seldom had a direct role in these relationships. Most statesupported universities, Michigan included, undertook research for government bureaus from time to time, and some had institutions for such purposes, most commonly agricultural experiment stations. During the preceding decade, a number ofuniversities created agen­ cies similar to the Department of Engineering Research. Massachu­ setts Institute of Technology (MIT), anxious to pay for a new cam­ pus, was aggressively soliciting business contracts through its Research Laboratory of Applied Chemistry and Technology Plan. The University of Pittsburgh, striving to enter the ranks of research universities, had collaborated with Pittsburgh’s leading bankers in building the Mellon Institute of Industrial Research. In addition, about two dozen state universities had begun engineering experi­ ment stations, although most were small and dependent on state governments rather than the private sector for income.1 Despite differences in scale, structure, and clientele, these agen­ cies were all intended to bridge the worlds of academe and practical affairs. They proliferated in a booming market for research services during World War I. The refining of petroleum, the manufacture of fine chemicals and optical glass, the high-pressure synthesis of ammonia and other substances, the manufacture of internal com­ bustion engines and automobile parts, the production of electrical equipment, the industrialization ofagriculture—all called for exper­ tise in depth, not just one or two innovators with bright ideas, but legions of chemists, metallurgists, and engineers. Even large corpo­ rations with increasingly elaborate laboratories could not be entirely self-sufficient in research and engineering. Firms both large and 1 See Roger L. Geiger, To Advance Knowledge: The Growth ofAmerican Research Univer­ sities, 1900-1940 (New York, 1986), for a general survey of the funding ofAmerican research universities. For accounts of specific institutions, seeJohn W. Servos, “The...