The University of Michigan

by Wilfred Byron Shaw

The College of Engineering, the fourth of the larger divisions of the University, was in fact the last to be established, as it was not until 1895 that the Regents authorized its organization as an independent department with Professor Charles E. Greene, Harvard, '62, as its first Dean.

The history of the course in engineering, however, is almost as old as the University, and really begins with the designation of a chair in Civil Engineering and Drawing in the article authorizing the University. That was as far as the matter went, however, for the first fifteen years, or until the appointment of Alexander Winchell in 1853 as Professor of Physics and Civil Engineering. Physics is the science upon which the profession of the civil engineer rests and the two subjects were closely associated in those days of small beginnings. There is little to indicate that Professor Winchell or his successor to the chair in 1855, William G. Peck, West Point, '44, did much to advance the engineering half of their charge. But with the coming of DeVolson Wood as Assistant Professor, immediately upon his graduation in 1857 from Rensselaer Polytechnic, the cause of engineering was properly presented to the students. Though the fourth institution in this country to offer courses in engineering, the first two students were not graduated until 1860, so that actually Michigan became the sixth institution in America to grant degrees in that branch of scientific training.

Professor Charles S. Denison, whose long service in the University began as an instructor just before Professor Wood's resignation, pays a tribute to his sturdy and at the same time genial character, his powerful intellect, and singularly virile influence on his students. He showed remarkable energy and administrative ability, in spite of many difficulties and a general lack of understanding of his aims in technical education, characteristic of those days. It is told of him that he even recommended an adaptation of one of the professors' houses on the Campus to the needs of the work in engineering, exactly thirty years before it was actually done. While he was here a course in military engineering was organized in 1862 and he delivered a course of lectures on that subject, but after the war it was abandoned. A similar fate overtook the School of Mines established in 1864-65, owing to the desire of the residents of the Northern Peninsula to have a state institution in that section, although a number of degrees in mining engineering were granted. A course in mechanical engineering was also authorized by the Regents in 1868, one of the very first to be organized in this country, but the degree was abolished two years later and the course was merged with civil engineering. One of the last acts of Professor Wood, before his resignation to accept a similar chair at Stevens Institute of Technology, was to present to the Regents a detailed plan for a School of Engineering and Technology as a fourth department of the University—foreshadowing the action taken twenty-three years later when engineering was made a separate department in the University.

The appointment of Charles Ezra Greene, Harvard, '62, Mass. Inst. Technology, '68, in 1872 marks a definite period in the history of this department. He found himself associated with two other men who had been instructors for a short period under Professor Wood, J.B. Davis, '68e, Assistant Professor of Civil Engineering, who became Professor of Geodesy and Surveying in 1891, and Charles S. Denison, Vermont, '70, who was to be in later years Professor of Stereotomy, Mechanism, and Drawing. These men saw the Department grow almost to its present proportions, and, as the first Faculty, formed a most harmonious combination of unusually varied elements. Professor Greene was a scholar and scientist who had a wide reputation as an engineer and an author; Professor Davis, on the contrary, was a practical man, a genius, whose love of the outdoors and fatherly care of his "boys" even extended to their "rubbers" on wet days, while his homely and wise sayings endeared him to every student. Professor Denison was a bachelor, small and very particular in personal appearance, who was long known by the students as "Little Lord Chesterfield," but an able teacher who was loved for his big heart and his very mannerisms. A course in mechanical engineering was again inaugurated in 1881 when Mortimer E. Cooley, Annapolis, '78, Assistant Engineer, U.S.N., was detailed to the University by the Navy Department and became the first Professor of Mechanical Engineering. In 1885 he resigned from the Navy and definitely cast his lot with the University, becoming Dean of the College of Engineering in February, 1904, after the death of Professor Greene in October, 1903. At the same time Professor Davis became Associate Dean and maintained an intimate and paternal care over the students until his retirement in 1910.

The Department of Electrical Engineering was organized in 1889, under the charge of Henry S. Carhart, Wesleyan, '69, Professor of Physics, and one instructor, George W. Patterson, Yale, '84, who became the first Professor of Electrical Engineering in May, 1905. In 1899 a course in Naval Architecture and Marine Engineering was created with Herbert C. Sadler, Glasgow, '93, as the first Professor. The following year the first degree was conferred in a new Department of Chemical Engineering, and in 1902 Edward DeMille Campbell, '86, became head of the new division as Professor of Chemical Engineering and Analytical Chemistry.

The first plan for the University called for a Professorship of Engineering and Architecture, but no attention was paid to the latter subject until the appointment of W.L.B. Jenney, to the Professorship of Architecture in 1876. Appropriations failed, however, and the chair was discontinued in 1880, not to be revived until 1906, when a Department of Architecture was organized under the charge of Emil Lorch, A.M., Harvard, '03, with the two departments associated under the title of the Department (later Colleges) of Engineering and Architecture. Within recent years special courses have been organized leading to degrees in Architectural Engineering, Chemical Engineering, and Aeronautical Engineering, as well as special groups of courses in such branches as sanitary, transportation, automobile, hydro-mechanical, industrial, and gas engineering and paper manufacturing. A reorganization of the numerous degrees given at one time in the Engineering College has now reduced the degrees to two, B.S. in Engineering and B.S. in Architecture.

The Engineering Quadrangle

Originally the work in engineering was centered in what is now the old south wing of University Hall. The first building on the Campus used exclusively for the engineering courses was the first section of the Engineering Laboratories built in 1881-82, as the result of the insistence of Dr. Frieze, then Acting President, that an unexpended appropriation of $2,500 be used immediately. At short intervals further additions were made and in 1900 the building, now known as the Engineering Shops, assumed its present form. In 1895 a further extension of the work in engineering was required, and the adjacent campus residence was remodeled for the purpose. This proved inadequate almost before completion and in 1902 the construction of the present Engineering Building was authorized. Standing across the southeast corner of the Campus and with the diagonal walk carried through it under a picturesque archway, this is one of the University's largest buildings and forms, with its two wings, and the Engineering Shops and the old Heating Plant, a square known as the Engineering Quadrangle. It was completed in 1904, but a further addition was necessitated in 1909, so that it now has a floor space of about 136,000 square feet, and cost with equipment about $400,000. In the basement of the long wing which extends down East University Avenue is the naval experimental tank, 300 feet long and 22 feet wide, in which models of various types of ships are tested by the Department of Marine Engineering. The only other tank of this character in the United States is at the Washington Navy Yard, and the facilities of the University's tank, therefore, were used extensively by the Government during the late war.