Oberlin College - Hi-O-Hi Yearbook (Oberlin, OH)

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1880 Lab work in the physical sciences improved radically, mainly under the leadership of chemistry professor Frank Jewett. In 1886 one of Jewett1s students, an Oberlin townie named Charles Martin Hall, while working in his woodshed laboratory on East College Street, discovered the electrolytic process for reducing aluminum from bauxite. This was the technological breakthrough that underwrote the American aluminum industry. Hallis personal fortune doubled the College endowment when he died in 1914. It was also Hall's will that created Tappan Square as we know it today. He was an early Champion of open space and stipulated that the College buildings which stood on the Square tthere were once haIf-a- dozen of themi be Cleared for grass and trees. The Oberlin Arboretum is one more legacy from Hall. 14

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xunx M 1 v 1879 In 1869 the village paper came out against baseball. HBaseball, it reported, ttis to be vetoed among students during the coming season because it has been found to have a demoralizing effect on scholarship. Football received a kinder press when it came on in the 18705. Announcing the results of the game between the College and a pickup team from Wellington in 1878, the paper notes, ttAlthough the game as played at Oberlin is much less dangerous that at other colleges, still even here there is sometimes a little excitement. 13

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1889 Other objects of missionary philanthropy were discovered or rediscovered. Oberlin dispatched its first missionary band to China in the early 18805. This was the origin of a trans-Pacific linkage which has lasted through good times and bad tthe Boxer Rebellion, two world wars, and the Chinese Revolutioni right down to the present in the form of Shansi Memorial Association. Oberlin's most durable overseas educational commitment. Just within the past few years, Shansi has re-established its roots in mainland China after a lapse of three decades. 15