Worcester Polytechnic Institute

Seventy Years

the Second American Revolution. In 1862, the year in which the Homestead Act became a law, Congress also passed the Morrill Act, which provided for the wholesale disposal of certain western lands for the benefit of education. The leading objects were stated to be: "without excluding other scientific and classical studies, and including military tactics, to teach such branches of learning as are related to agriculture and the mechanicarts. " Under this act each Senator and Representative was entitled to 30,000 acres, the land scrip representing the grant to be sold for the benefit of colleges within the states.

Within a decade nearly every state in the Union had founded a state college, or expanded an existing one, with funds so provided. About half of these institutions inaugurated technical departments or combined instruction in agriculture with mechanics. Conspicuous among them were Michigan, Wisconsin, Iowa, Missouri, and California. Provisions for a course in Engineering were written into the charter of the University of Michigan in 1837; the first professor of engineering was appointed in 1853; and the first degrees in engineering granted in 1860.

Five institutions were founded at about the same time as the Worcester Institute, each of which became a leading college of engineering. The earliest of these to be incorporated was the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. It was founded on a plan devised by Prof. William B. Rogers and was granted a charter on April 10, 1861. The organization was maintained during the war, and instruction began in rented rooms at Boston in 1865. Three purposes were named in the plan: to maintain a society of arts, a museum of arts, and a school of industrial science. The Institute was the recipient of many gifts, and shared with the Massachusetts Agricultural College the benefits of land grants under the Morrill Act.

Cornell University was also initiated as a result of the Morrill Act, but its foundation was accomplished by the combining of the vision of a great educator, Andrew Dickson White, with the generosity and zeal of one of New York's

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