Massachusetts Institute of Technology - Technique Yearbook (Cambridge, MA)

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PRQLOGUE

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Prologue Views CONTENTS Administration Classes Athletics Pictorial Technology Activities Publications Honorary Societies Dorrnitories Fraternities I Organizations Projects Student Directory

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PROLOGUE HE present is not isolated from the past but grows and is evolved from it. The events of this year at Technology are affected by the happenings of previous years and are the result of that which has gone before. It is as if the activities recorded in this present vol- ume of TECHNIQUE were merely scenes in just one act of a long drama that has been unfold- ing for years. It is obvious that a synopsis of the past history of Technology is essential for a better understanding of the present action. For this reason, a brief prologue is here pre- sented, giving the first acts of this drama and some account of the great men who strode upon this stage. This drama had its inception in the mind of one man, William Barton Rogers. Rogers was the greatest of an eminent family of scientists, nurtured in natural philosophy, a teacher and propagandist of science all his days. Rogers recognized the great discrepancy between the traditional classical training that was given young men in that time and Preridefzt1865-70,1878-81 the demands that the theater of life made upon them, for the world had already become industrialized. He realized that those who toiled for science, pure or applied, were few, and that those who saw its needs and one nation's need for it, were fewer. Rogers saw the great opportunity for an institution, not only for research but for the application of exact knowledge to invention and industry. The Massachusetts Institute of Technology is the deliberate design for the satisfaction of these needs, and thus it was that the drama began. Rogers' vision was clear and direct and in the ensuing years, it has never been necessary to deviate from the line of action laid down by him in 1846 in his Plan for a Polytechnic School in Boston' '-the foundation ofa great engineering School. In the fall of 1860, his dreams began to be realized by the incorporation of the Massa- chusetts Institute of Technology. The Civil War then intervened and the opening was de- layed. February of 1865, however, saw Rogers as the head of the new school, with fifteen students pursuing their studies in a few rooms on Summer Street, Boston. During its first years, the new school lived precariously, and its financial backing was meagre for it was at a time when the whole country was in serious economic difficulty. In 1866, however, on land granted by the government in the new WILLIAM BARTON ROGERS HUNTINGTON HALL IN THE EARLY '70s 1 4