Carnegie Mellon University - Thistle Yearbook (Pittsburgh, PA)

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Stepping out! Fearless freshmen peer down the stainvell of Architect's leap in Wean Hall. Thoughtful freshman Dave Malinowski saves the 'Sch ag hallway carpeting from unnecessary wear and tear. 21

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Andrew Carnegie 1835-1919 The founding of Carnegie Technical Schools in 1900, which later became Carnegie Mellon University, was the result of a man who perhaps more than any other epitomized the Horatio Alger of the 19th century. Born the son of a weaver in Dunfermline, Scotland in 1835, Andrew Carnegie emigrated to America with his family at the age of thirteen, when the Industrial Revolution rendered his father’s occupation obsolete. The Carnegies settled in Allegheny, Pennsylvania (now Pittsburgh’s North Side), where young Andrew went to work first as a textile mill bobbin boy, then a messenger boy for a local telegraph company. Ambitious and intelligent, he was soon employed as a personal telegraph operator for the Pennsylvania Railroad’s Western Division Superintendent in 1852. This began an association with American railroads, which was to guide his investments for the remainder of his life. Replacing his supervisor in 1859, he left the Railroad in 1865 to begin investments in companies producing railroad sleeping cars, bridges and iron for railroad bridges and rails. After purchasing the American rights to the Bessemer steel-making process in 1872, he built the ]. Edgar Thomson Steel Works just outside of Pittsburgh; it formed the cornerstone of the Carnegie Steel Company organized several years later. In acquiring the Homestead Steel Works in 1883, Andrew Carnegie achieved complete control of the American Steel Industry. Shortly after the turn of the century, Carnegie, a millionaire many times over, sold this complete control to U.S. Steel (under J.P. Morgan) for $480 million. He was now ready to address his philanthropic efforts on a full time basis, although the $400 million he attempted to give away was really only the continuation of the philanthropy he had begun as early as 1873. Recognizing the need for Pittsburgh’s youth to have first class technical schools, Mr. Carnegie donated several million dollars to found Carnegie Technical School, which opened in October of 1905 to teach trades such as bricklaying, foundry work, and electrical practices. Carnegie Hall in New York, the Carnegie Institute in Pittsburgh, the World Palace of Peace in the Hague—all were built courtesy of his generosity. He established nearly 3000 libraries worldwide, and donated over 7500 organs to music halls and churches before his death in 1919. Today, the Carnegie Foundation continues his philanthropy. These and other gifts testify to the spirit and ambition that made Andrew Carnegie one of America’s greatest success stories. 23