Early experiments

• In England engineering was still learned by apprenticeship until around 1900, while France had developed a system of formal schooling in engineering in the late eighteenth century.   The flagship school in France, L'Ecole Polytechnique, taught a broad foundation of mathematics and science with the idea that the students would then go to specialized programs to learn such fields as mining engineering and bridge design.
  
• Mechanics institutes founded between 1820 and 1870: a combination of professional association plus technical high school.   The Ohio Mechanics Institute was founded in 1828 and had about 1200 members by 1850.  Mechanics Institutes stressed practical education, often held in the evening for practicing mechanics (machinists).  These evolved into high school programs, often associated with large public high schools.
• U.S. Military Academy at West Point founded 1802 to teach military engineering, did not operate until 1812.  Modeled on the French system of formal engineering education for the elite, with an emphasis on math and science.  Retired military engineers became an important part of the engineering labor supply after about 1830 (15 practicing in 1830, more than 100 in 1838)
• Rensselaer School founded in 1823.  Started granting degrees in civil engineering in 1835, and reorganized to imitate French technical education in 1849.
• Civil Engineering courses at Union College 1845, Univ. of Michigan 1847, Brown 1847, Yale 1852.  These programs were small; Lawrence School of Science at Harvard (founded in 1842) graduated only 49 men before the civil war.

 Amos Eaton

• The Rensselaer School was founded in 1825, the first civilian technical school on the college level.  Stephen Van Rensselaer put up the money and Amos Eaton (1776-1842) provided the ideas and directed the new school.
• Eaton stressed that students would learn science from its practical applications.  At Rensselaer: "In every branch of learning, the pupil begins with its practical application; and is introduced to a knowledge of elementary principles, from time to time, as his progress requires.  After visiting a bleaching factory, he returns to the laboratory and produced the chlorine gas and experiments upon it, until he is familiar with all the elementary principles appertaining to that curious substance." Eaton was struggling to figure out the relationship between science and engineering education.  He was also a pioneer of hands-on education.
• Van Rensselaer wrote in 1824: "My principal object is, to qualify teachers for instructing the sons and daughters of Farmers and Mechanics, by lectures or otherwise, in the application of experimental chemistry, philosophy, and natural history, to agriculture, domestic economy, the arts and manufactures."
• Rensselaer was reorganized to teach more courses in engineering, particularly after Eaton left in 1842.   The trustees hired a director, B. Franklin Greene, who was committed to the French model .  This proved successful, and for twenty years or so Rensselaer was the civilian equivalent of West Point for training in civil engineering.

• Gave each state federal land (or land script)--30,000 acres for each Senator and Representative--to sell to raise money for colleges "to teach such branches of learning as are related to agriculture and the mechanic arts... in order to promote the liberal and practical education of the industrial classes..."
• problem of what to teach--engineers weren't using much theory.  Three possibilities:
• same as other colleges (classics) to make education democratic.
• science, which was somehow the theory behind engineering, but not in fact very useful.
• technical training (farming and shop practice)--why go to school to learn that?
• the eventual solution to this problem was to teach applied science, but there wasn't much of that to teach before about 1900
• Clemson University opened in 1893 with 446 students. History of Clemson

 Fort Hill

• MIT 1861 (instruction began 1865--followed a Russian model emphasizing teaching students to use machine tools but not manufacture of finished products), Worcester Polytechnic Institute 1865 (intended to train foreman for shops, not professionals--put its emphasis on actual production of items for sale by students in the shops), Lehigh 1866, Stevens 1871 (mechanical engineering only--no general cultural education).
• 17 schools taught engineering in 1870 (11% of American engineers were college graduates), 85 in 1880, 110 in 1890

• A Ph.D. is supposed to train you to do research and discover new knowledge, not just teach you existing knowledge
• university professors were expected to do research, while earlier college professors had just been teachers
• doing scientific research became professionalized, where earlier it had been done mostly as a hobby

Applied science:

• Engineering became increasingly scientific
• the new fields of electrical engineering (professional society 1884) and chemical engineering (professional society 1908) had a scientific base from the beginning, but employment opportunities were almost entirely with large corporations
• Starting in the 1870s engineering schools latched onto the idea of building laboratories for technical research or testing.
• Development of agricultural experiment stations, particularly after the passage of the Hatch Act in 1887.
• during World War I Arthur D. Little articulated the concept of "unit operations"--breaking chemical engineering processes down into individual building blocks like "pulverizing, dyeing, roasting, crystallizing, filtering, evaporations, electrolyzing, and so on." Now there was a theory you could teach students, instead of explaining the process by which you make bleach.

 Arthur D. Little

• Nearly all engineers entering the profession after 1910 had engineering degrees.  Applied science was fairly well established, though what else should be taught was still controversial