The history of Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute (RPI) spans nearly two hundred years beginning with its founding in 1824. RPI is the oldest continuously operating technological university in both the English-speaking world and the Americas. Note: a possible competitor for this title is the United States Military Academy (USMA) at West Point, which claims to have the oldest engineering department in the US . While this is true, it is still true that RPI offered the first engineering degree (Civil Engineering) in 1835. The statement of being 'the oldest" is thus justified in different ways by both. The modifier "in continuous existence" appears in Ricketts, Palmer C. History of the Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute. 2nd e. The Institute was the first to grant a civil engineering degree in the United States, in 1835. More recently, RPI also offered the first environmental engineering degree in the United States in 1961, and possibly the first ever undergraduate degree in video game design, in 2007. (More information is available at http://www.gsas.rpi.edu/ )
Timeline of institute events
1824 Rensselaer School is established, board of trustees meet on December 29 1825 School opens at Old Bank Place, on January 5 1826 State of New York incorporates school 1834 Renamed the Rensselaer Institute, moving to Van der Heyden Mansion 1835 Institute confers first degree in civil engineering in the United States, to four students, a one-year C.E. Eight young women enroll in a special mathematics course 1841 Institute removes back to Old Bank Place 1850 Reorganizes into a three-year undergraduate curriculum 1861 Renamed the Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute 1864 Great Troy Fire destroys Infant School property 1873 Institute participates in its first ever intercollegiate sporting event, in baseball, against Union College 1881 Garnet Douglass Baltimore, first African-American at Rensselaer, earns a degree 1904 Fire destroys the Main Building 1914 Confers its first graduate degree in mechanical engineering, M.S. 1916 Confers its first doctorate in electrical engineering, D.Eng. 1944 Lois Graham becomes the first female RPI student to be inducted into Pi Tau Sigma, the Mechanical Engineering Honor Society 1945 Lois Graham and Mary Ellen Rathbun, first two women, earn a degree at the institute 1951 Reorganizes into a four-year curriculum for undergraduates 1961 Confers the first degree in environmental engineering in the United States 1973 Ivar Giaever is first alumni to win the Nobel Prize 1999 Shirley Ann Jackson elected first African-American female university president in the United States 2000 Rensselaer Plan unveiled
Pre-RPI: The van Rensselaer Family see also: History of Troy, New York
In 1609, Henry Hudson, exploring for Holland, sailed up what is now called the Hudson River. His report back to Holland established a Dutch presence in the fur trade in what the "usurping Hollanders" in 1614 called "New Netherland." In 1630, Kiliaen van Rensselaer became the patroon of Rensselaerswyck, a manor 24 miles long and 48 miles wide that encompassed area within the current Albany, Rensselaer, and Columbia counties.
In 1659, Jan Barentsen Wemp, with the permission of Jan Baptist van Rensselaer and Arent van Corlaer, purchased the "Great Meadow Ground," which would become the site of the city of Troy. On January 5, 1789 the freeholders in "Ashley's Ferry" and other surrounding farm areas met at Ashley's Tavern and established the name Troy for their village.
Founding
Stephen van Rensselaer III established the Rensselaer School on November 5, 1824 with a letter to the Rev. Dr. Samuel Blatchford, in which Van Rensselaer asked Blatchford to serve as the first president. Within the letter he appointed Amos Eaton as the school's first senior professor and appointed the first board of trustees. An untrue myth once circulated that the Van Rensselaer and Eaton met in prison. Amos Eaton was indeed in prison from 1810 to 1815 for forgery, but he and Stephen van Rensselaer met in 1820 when Van Rensselaer charged Eaton with surveying the land that would become the site of the Erie Canal.McAllister, E. M. (1941). Amos Eaton: Scientist and Educator 1776–1842. University of Pennsylvania Press. Van Rensselaer gave Eaton permission to lecture at towns along the way, clearly a precursor to the founding of an institute of higher learning. The expressed purpose of the institute was to be "for the application of science and technology to the common purposes of life."Helfrich, K. (2006). Amos Eaton., quote from the founding letter written by Stephen van Rensselaer
On December 29 of 1824, the president and the board met and established the methods of instruction, which were rather different from methods employed at other colleges at the time. Students spent six hours a day performing experiments and explaining their rationale and gave their own lectures rather than listening to lectures and watching demonstrations. This unconventional mode of instruction was inspired by the original intention to make the Rensselaer School a place to train students in teaching what they had learned; as van Rensselaer wrote to Blatchford, he wanted the school's graduates "to qualify [as] teachers for instructing the sons and daughters of farmers and mechanics, by lectures or other-wise, in the application of experimental chemistry, philosophy, and natural history, to agriculture, domestic economy, the arts, and manufactures." Although van Rensselaer, at Eaton's suggestion, even waived tuition for students who committed to teaching locally for at least one year after graduation as an incentive for graduates of the Rensselaer School to enter the teaching profession, this intended objective was ultimately unsuccessful. Tuition was around $80 a semester.
1825–1900
The school opened on Monday, January 3, 1825 at the Old Bank Place, a building at the north end of Troy. The opening was announced by a notice, signed by the president, and printed in the Troy Sentinel on December 28. The school attracted students from New York, Massachusetts, Vermont, Ohio, and Pennsylvania. The fact that the school attracted students from afar is attributed to the reputation of Eaton. Fourteen months of successful trial led to the incorporation of the school on March 21, 1826 by the State of New York. In its early years, the Rensselaer School resembled a graduate school more than it did a college. It drew graduates of older institutions such as Amherst, Bowdoin, Columbia, Harvard, Penn, Princeton, Union, Wesleyan, Williams, and Yale. Indeed, there was a considerable stream from Yale, where there were several teachers interested in the sciences.
During this period, the Rensselaer School, renamed the Rensselaer Institute in 1832, was a small but vital center for technological research. The first civil engineering degree in the United States was granted by the institute in 1835, and many of the best remembered civil engineers of that time graduated from the school. Important visiting scholars included Joseph Henry, who had previously studied under Amos Eaton, and Thomas Davenport, who sold the world's first working electric motor to the institute. In 1847, alumnus Benjamin Franklin Greene became the new senior professor. Earlier he had done a thorough study of European technical schools to see how Rensselaer could be improved. In 1850 he reorganized the school into a three-year polytechnic institute with six technical schools. In 1861 the name was changed to Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute.
The great fire of 1862
One of the most well known events in Troy's early history is the Great Fire of 1862, which destroyed over 507 buildings in Troy and gutted in the heart of the city. The fire started around noon on May 10 due to sparks from a passing locomotive setting a shingle of the Rensselaer and Saratoga Railroad Bridge on fire. Due to unfavorable winds, the fire spread to a broad belt of flame across the city in less than an hour and a half. By six o'clock, the fire brigade stayed the spread of the fire at Donohue & Burge's carriage factory on 7th and Congress. As night fell, the view from 8th Street was still a no little grandeur. "Here and there unquenched flames illuminated desolated spaces, and great beds of fire glowed among the blackened walls of the destroyed buildings."
The "Infant School" building that housed the Institute at the time was destroyed in this fire. Columbia University proposed that Rensselaer leave Troy altogether and merge with its New York City campus. Ultimately, the proposal was rejected and the campus left the crowded downtown for the hillside which offered potential for expansion. Classes were temporarily held at the Vail House and in the Troy University building until 1864, when the Institute moved to a building on Broadway on 8th Street, now the site of the Approach.
The Proudfit observatory
In 1875 Mr. and Mrs. Ebenezer Proudfit of Troy donated $15,000 to build an impressive observatory named the William Proudfit Observatory. The observatory was named in honor of the Proudfit's son, an RPI student in the class of 1877 who died in a tragic stagecoach accident at the age of 19. On November 10, 1875, the trustees accepted a proposal by the Proudfits to build an observatory in his honor, noting that the gift was "not only a valuable contribution to science and learning, but also an appropriate memorial to their lamented son".Nason. pg 6 The building was constructed on the precipice of the hill near where Walker Lab now stands. Some of the foundations of the building may still be intact, lying beneath what is now a small garden. The central part of this building was two stories high, and was topped with an impressive dome measuring 29 feet in diameter. The original design intended the eastern wing to be used for "meridian instruments" while the western wing would be used for "computation and a library". The dome was by far the most interesting feature of this building and was innovative in being one of the first paper domes constructed. The Hall process had not been invented, so aluminium was still more expensive than gold, and paper was a practical material. The design and construction was overseen by Prof. Dascom Greene, a professor of mathematics and astronomy, who may be considered the inventor of the paper design. Prof. Greene provided the following rationale for paper construction:
Prof. Greene contracted E. Waters & Sons, a firm in Troy known for boat manufacture, to work on the project. In 1878 they finished the paper observatory dome for the newly erected building. The construction method was almost identical to that used at the time for paper boats: thick linen paper was formed over a mold with a wooden framework, which was removed from the mold along with the paper. Finished sections were bolted together and the joints were weatherproofed with cotton cloth saturated with white lead. The RPI dome was 29 feet in diameter and consisted of 16 sections plus a 4-foot wide shuttered opening for the telescope. The paper material was 1/6 of an inch thick and was described as "hard as wood".American Architect & Building News. Jan 25, 1879, p 30. It weighed 4000 pounds, of which paper probably accounted for 1000 pounds. The dome was supported by six eight-inch cannonballs, which moved between grooved iron tracks, allowing the dome to "be easily revolved by a moderate pressure applied directly without the aid of machinery." The method of paper dome construction was utilized in several other observatories in the Northeast, including one at West Point. A patent was issued to E. Waters & Sons in 1881.