Research, Engineering, and Science in American Engineering Colleges: 1900–1960

Abstract

Research, Engineering, and Science in American Engineering Colleges: 1900-1960 BRUCE SEELY In 1872 the catalog for the University of Illinois’s engineering college told students, “This school is designed to make good practical engineers.”1 At the turn of the century, this goal still guided most American engineering educators, including Embury A. Hitchcock, Professor of Experimental Engineering at Ohio State University. After introducing his mechanical engineering students to machinery, design, and practical problem solving, he assigned senior projects such as calculating heat balances for moving locomotives on the Hocking Valley Railroad. Similarly, students at Cornell in 1899 tested street railway motors and generators in Buffalo; textile engineering students at Georgia Tech ran a factory.2 College may have replaced the apprenticeships as the locus of engineering education, but the prac­ tical focus of the “shop culture” had not disappeared. Dr. Seely is in the Department of Social Sciences at Michigan Technological University. He wishes to thank a number of people for advice, comments, suggestions, and assistance that significantly improved the article: Terry Reynolds, Walter Vincenti, Edwin Layton, the Technology and Culture referees, and conference and seminar partic­ ipants who heard earlier versions. He also acknowledges support from a number of agencies over a period of more than six years, including the Texas Engineering Experiment Station, the National Science Foundation Program in the History and Philosophy of Science (awards SES-8711164 and SES-8921936), and the National Endowment for the Humanities Travel to Collections program. 'University of Illinois, Report ofthe Board ofTrustees (1870-71), p. 41, quoted in Ira O. Baker and Everett E. King, History ofthe College ofEngineering ofthe University ofIllinois, 1868-1945 (Urbana, Ill., ca. 1946), p. 242. 2Heat balance calculations required students to measure fuel and boiler water consumed and gallons of water pumped for twenty-four hours. See Embury A. Hitchcock, My Fifty Years in Engineering: The Autobiography of a Human Engineer (Caldwell, Idaho, 1939), pp. 75—78, 91 — 112; Robert C. McMath, Jr., Ronald H. Baylor, James E. Brittain, Lawrence Foster, August W. Giebelhaus, and Germaine M. Reed, Engineering the New South: Georgia Tech, 1885-1985 (Athens, Ga., 1985), pp. 8188 ; and Cornell University, Annual Report of the President (Ithaca, N.Y., 1899-1900), p. 53. On school versus shop culture, see Monte Calvert, The Mechanical Engineer in America, 1830-1910: Professional Cultures in Conflict (Baltimore, 1967).© 1993 by the Society for the History of Technology. All rights reserved. 0040-165X/93/3402-0004$01.00 344 Research, Engineering, and Science in Engineering Colleges 345 By 1960, however, engineering education looked very different. The emphasis on rules of thumb learned through practical experience had given way to an education stressing scientifically derived theory expressed in the language of mathematics. This ideal was not new; it appeared before 1900 in chemical and electrical engineering, and during the early 20th century scientific methodologies appeared in other branches of engineering.3 A 1955 study for the American Society for Engineering Education recommended that 50 percent of undergraduate instruction be in science and engineeringscience, with the other halfdivided equally between engineering technology and general education electives.4 Academic engineering research changed in similar ways during this period. In 1900, little research was conducted in engineering schools because of the heavy teaching demands on faculty. Where research was conducted, it usually grew out of consulting projects and focused on specific, practical problems. After 1900 a few more professors were likely to conduct research, but those studies remained tied to real-world prob­ lems such as sewage treatment, road building, concrete culverts, electrical transmission, and uses of local mineral resources. This pattern prevailed in American engineering colleges through World War II. After 1945, however, academic researchers increasingly attacked, not practical prob­ lems, but theoretical questions related to materials or engineering prin­ ciples. And as theory attracted more attention, many engineering re­ search projects became difficult to distinguish from “pure” scientific studies. Titles do not tell the whole story, but research is obviously chang­ ing when engineers at the University of Illinois are working on “Analysis of Stresses in Rotationally Symmetric Pressure Vessels” (1957—58) and “Design ofAccurate, Consistent, and Stable Finite-DifferenceAlgorithms for the Integration of Time-dependent Systems of Conservation...