been mentioned in connection with the school. This development was largely
possible because Stephen Salisbury had increased his gifts. His first letter to
the treasurer noted casually: "I enclose my check for $10,000 for the expenses
of instruction." Less than a year later he gave a fund of $50,000 for the same
cause, hoping, he said, that it would "encourage contributions from others."
It did, in a very few cases, but at the same time it set a precedent for
Salisbury generosity which all too often was a comfortable hedge for others
to hide behind.
Engineering had worked its way through a series of definitions and was
now more than a union of art and craft in which the men who operated
machines were called engineers. Now engineering suggested techniques and
skills which had picked up the tools of chemistry, physics, and mathematics.
There was a substantial body of principles, and already there was evidence
that science would soon be part of engineering's connotation.
Formerly the United States had relied almost entirely upon
European-trained men for all of its engineering. As Emory Washburn
deplored, "Instead of educating scientific men to take care of our shops, we
went abroad for them." The pattern had been the same when civil engineers
had been needed for the railroads. "So it was with mechanical engineering, in
the invention and construction of our machines. They picked up their
education by piece meal in the best way they could. They were educated by
the necessity of the case, at a very great expense, as well as loss and
inconvenience."
Only one nation-wide society of engineering existed in America, the
American Society of Civil Engineers, founded in 1852.
Such was the situation, as far as engineering was concerned, when the
board of the Institute ambitiously voted to offer courses in "Mechanical
Engineering, Civil Engineering, Physics, Chemistry, Drawing, French,
German, and English."
Finding teachers for this advanced curriculum would not be easy. First of
all, there had to be a principal. Paul Chadbourne at Williams was invited
twice, but twice refused. Professor C. F. Brackett of Bowdoin was asked with
the same result. Recommended by the superintendent of the Boston public
schools was the well-educated principal of the Arlington High School,
Charles O. Thompson, a graduate of Dartmouth with a special interest in
chemistry.
Thinking that they might fill two posts with one man, the trustees invited
Charles Thompson to visit a board meeting in April. With full dark-red beard,
freshly trimmed now that it was spring, Mr. Thompson clearly impressed the
older men. In spite of his youth (he was only thirty-one), he was asked to be
"professor of chemistry and to act as principal." Mr. Thompson accepted the
position with the condition that the opening of school be delayed long
enough for him to visit the technical schools of Europe.
The board of trustees agreed, and by that agreement gave good evidence
of the scope of planning which characterized the begin-
