The Two Towers: Main

Questions were multiplying every day, he said. What shall we do with our rivers? How shall we economize on fuel? "It costs thirty-three million yearly to furnish wood and coal for the locomotives on our railways." How shall we ventilate our buildings, control malarious diseases, insure a water supply and destroy our sewage? And what shall we do to occupy the time and attention of children in our large cities?

There was so much to learn about the strength of materials, the force of wind and currents, the corrosive action of salt water. "Technical problems have everywhere broadened and deepened. But advance means more room, appliances, instruction. It may mean more time, a longer course."

So spoke Homer T. Fuller, the second president of the Institute in his inaugural address at the Commencement exercises of 1883. When, after his resignation in 1894, he spoke again at graduation, the school had not answered all of his questions, but it had tackled many of them. The school program had developed into a four-year course; the Institute had extended its buildings; it had solved water and sewage problems for the City of Worcester; it had instituted a hydraulic laboratory which soon was to attract international attention.

As for giving young people in the cities something to do, it had at least amply solved that problem for its own students. The biggest challenge of all, stated Dr. Fuller, was to find time for the new work resulting from "continual fresh discoveries in the arts and new applications of science."

Many things had changed.

First of all, the name. For years no one had known what to call the school. No one, not even the trustees or teachers, called it by its full name. Immediately after its incorporation, the school had been soundly spanked for its "interminable name" by the Daily Spy, but nothing had been done about it. The Institute itself used such terms as the Scientific School, the School of Industrial Science, the Technical School, and Worcester Free Institute. As for the people of Worcester, they simply labeled it "the Tech," in the same way they talked about the station, the Common, the Court House, or the City Hall. "The Tech" it remained in the minds and on the lips of everyone who lived in the school's first half-century, even though the name was officially changed to Worcester Polytechnic Institute in July of 1887.

Just as the name had changed, so had the people. Only two of the original board members--Senator George F. Hoar and Charles H. Morgan--were still serving. Conspicuously missing was Stephen

Sure foundations have been laid. The utility of combined study, handicraft, and laboratory work is no longer problematic.
      --Homer T. Fuller, 1894

Loyalty and affection soon contrive to shorten names. Perhaps in a few years we shall know our institution as Worcester Technical School.
      --Charles Thompson, 1869