to influence the scheme of education. The expansion of industry created a wide field for mining, metallurgical, and mechanical engineers. Teaching became practical, and laboratory teaching, a field in which American leadership has been especially marked, was developed. Early courses in mechanical engineering were concerned largely with the design of machinery and with the technology of the workshop. The problem of power production and application on a large scale did not become one of major importance until the eighties. Shops rather than the laboratory were the seat of the early efforts at practical instruction, and the emphasis on shopwork was typical of the desire of the schools to make their training as practical as possible.
As soon as the first little Engineering Laboratory was completed in 1882, it was overcrowded and President Angell reported to the Regents:
It was not possible for the Professor alone and in his narrow quarters to give instruction to all who desired it. The utility of actual work with tools and machines to engineers is now recognized in leading schools on both sides of the Atlantic. It is to be hoped that means may be placed at our disposal for enlarging the equipment of the Laboratory, and for providing a suitable assistant for the Professor.
R.P.
By 1885 additional laboratory space was necessary. The first unit of the permanent brick Engineering Shop, which still stands in 1953 as the east part of the Automotive Laboratory, was built on the east side of the original laboratory, and connected with it by a passageway at the second-floor level. The "new" Engineering Laboratory had three stories and an attic. Within two years after completion in 1886, an enlargement was needed, which necessitated the removal of the first laboratory. The completed building consisted of the original east building, the central part and tower, and a west-wing one-story foundry and forge shop. It contained offices, classrooms, drawing rooms, and laboratories for testing machines, steam engines, water motors, and strength of materials. The tower held a water tank of one-hundred-barrel capacity for hydraulic work and a thirty-foot glass tube mercury column for standardizing gages.
In 1891 the building which had been occupied by the Dental School was turned over to the Engineering Department. The main part, completed in 1840-41, had originally been one of the four professors' residences. Professor Frieze had been its last occupant. It had been equipped for the Dental School in 1877, and an east wing had been added in 1878. In 1891 it was again enlarged by the addition of a third story on the north; the entrance was changed to the west side of the new part, and the word "engineering" was placed over the doorway. There were fifteen classrooms and several offices in this building, which continued in use until 1922, when it was removed to make room for Clements Library. Much of the equipment for these various laboratories came as gifts from tool and machine manufacturers.
Because of the tremendous interest in shops and laboratories during the eighties the question arose concerning the desirability of establishing a manual-training school in which young men could be trained as skilled mechanics. It was decided that the wisest plan would be to limit the mechanical equipment and instruction to the needs of students in civil, mining, and mechanical engineering, not only because the work at the University was intended to lead to an academic degree upon the conclusion of professional training, but because it was difficult to obtain funds for necessary equipment.
The Department of Electrical Engineering came into being in 1889 under the
