The Two Towers: Main

People who make the rules keep the rules.
      --Fraternity member, 1964

The corporation records its determination to maintain status of this Institute as an engineering college of the highest grade and directs the Faculty to establish and maintain entrance requirements and graduation standards suitable for a college of that status.
      --Board of Trustees, 1905

Do not be deceived. The good professor is not necessarily the famous man, the great speaker, or the great writer, or the master of books, or the very learned man, or the popular man.
      --John Woodman, 1868

death and absolved everyone in generous forgiveness. So did his family. Nevertheless, it was an appalling experience through which many thoughtless boys grew up to become responsible men. Fraternities and classes began making their own rules of conduct, thereby initiating a self-discipline which has become traditional and has been seldom transgressed.

In 1908 the Tech community was also sobered by the resignation of the beloved Johnny Sinclair as the last member of the school's original faculty. Professor Sinclair, who retired on the first Carnegie annuity, shared his good fortune by turning over to Worcester Tech three paid-up insurance policies amounting to ten thousand dollars. It was his wish thus to endow a chair in mathematics and "to show affection," as he said, "for the Institute where in the early years Mrs. Sinclair and I taught together, and to show my gratitude for the opportunity which the Institute opened to me through thirty-nine years for a useful life." Although Professor Sinclair's gift was not publicly disclosed until after his death, an announcement was made that a chair bearing his name would be established and that the first recipient would be Levi Conant, who since 1901 had been chief assistant in the Mathematics Department. Professor Sinclair was delighted.

The teachers of Tech were becoming as well known for ability in the classroom as for brilliance in their subjects. Reflecting this regard, the trustees had virtually handed over to the faculty the task of running the institution. This was the day of the giants. In the Physics Department was A. Wilmer Duff, known in many a school for his Textbook of Physics. There was Arthur W. French in Civil Engineering; Leonard P. Kinnicutt in Chemistry; George H. Haynes in Economics and Government; Zelotes W. Coombs in English; Charles J. Adams in Modern Languages; William W. Bird in Mechanical Engineering; Harold B. Smith in Electrical Engineering, and Alton L. Smith in Drawing and Machine Design.

Serving with these men were such professors and instructors as Arthur W. Ewell, Frederic Bonnet, Jr., Raymond K. Morley, Joseph O. Phelon, Carleton A. Read, Carl D. Knight, George I. Rockwood, Francis W. Roys, Arthur J. Knight, Morton Masius, Robert C. Sweetser, Daniel F. O'Regan, and Daniel F. Calhane.

In 1911 Tech lost one of its strongest professors, Professor Kinnicutt, at the too-early age of fifty-six. His successor had been picked by himself many years previously, in 1896, while attending a conference of the British Association for Advancement of Science, held at the invitation of the Duke of Marlborough at Blenheim Castle. On that occasion a picture was taken of the guests who assembled on the front steps of the castle. Dr. Kinnicutt, who had been looking for the right man for his department (Dr. Fuller had recently resigned as "principal and instructor of chemistry"), had been told of a young scientist who was doing outstanding graduate work in Europe.

Taking a chance that he might find the man here, Dr. Kinnicutt