Inventing Institutions, Teaching Technology

Julius A. Stratton; Loretta H. Mannix. Mind and Hand: The Birth of MIT. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 2005. xix + 781 pp. $55.

Reviewed by Peter A. Shulman

Few institutions today loom as large over science and engineering as the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. MIT has assumed a leading role in technical research, pedagogical innovation, and the crafting of national science and technology policy. Within the fields of chemistry and chemical engineering alone, the Institute bears a distinguished history: the nation’s first laboratory-based chemistry education, pathbreaking work in fields ranging from fluid bed catalytic cracking of petroleum to ozone chemistry, and connections to 12 Nobel laureates in chemistry. In Mind and Hand: The Birth of MIT, Julius Stratton and Loretta Mannix provide far more than an institutional history of what made these achievements possible—they describe the very institutionalization of American science and technology itself.

Americans experimented with technical education throughout the 19th century, building military academies, polytechnic institutes, and university-based scientific schools. But at the dawn of the Civil War, no one pedagogical model dominated the landscape.

Enter William Barton Rogers, a gifted teacher, charismatic administrator, and accomplished scientist with a longstanding interest in pedagogy. Rogers proposed an “English and mathematical” high school in Baltimore as early as 1828; nine years later he proposed a “school of arts” in Philadelphia . Why these projects failed and MIT ultimately succeeded is the major lesson of the first three-quarters of this book.

Years of preparation by Boston ’s business and scientific elite were as equally necessary as Rogers ’s leadership. They studied engineering at the École Polytechnique and the Conservatoire des Arts et Métiers in France , technical education at Karlsruhe in Germany , and the collections at the British Museum of Practical Geology and Kew Gardens . Yet the Boston elite’s vision was unmistakably provincial and stemmed from autochthonous elements in American society. Rogers and his Boston colleagues thought an educational institution committed to engineering would benefit their industrializing city and its surroundings. Toward this end, they lobbied the state legislature for land in the newly filled Back Bay, marshaled Boston’s diverse scientific communities, fended off an amalgamation with Harvard, and above all, solicited the finances of wealthy citizens. In telling this story, Stratton and Mannix demonstrate how dollars were as necessary as ideas and interest in creating the new institution.

Rogers and his colleagues’ earliest proposal for a technical institute, released in 1860, outlined an organization of three separate but interrelated parts: a museum of arts that would be central to the institute, a society of arts to provide a forum for research and discussion, and a school of industrial science that would train both young students and older mechanics seeking specialized skills. Only the school survived, a consequence of its immediate practical importance in training engineers, the immense resources its development consumed, and the criteria necessary to secure Morrill Land-Grant funds. Rogers never abandoned his hope for a society and a museum, but by the time the school was well established in the late 19th century, the other branches no longer seemed as necessary.

The final six chapters of the book describe the growth of the institute. With uncommon care, the authors examine the early faculty, students, and courses of study. The early years were not without difficulty; the institute faced constant financial troubles, inadequate space, and a higher proportion of well-off students than Rogers desired (he sought a mix of classes and educational levels). Yet the institute’s accomplishments were many.

Even in a book of this length, omissions are inevitable. I had hoped for a deeper discussion of student life and the social texture of the institute’s earliest years. Also missing is a consideration of the scientific lives of the major figures behind MIT’s foundation. The reader is left uncertain whether, for instance, Rogers ’s geological fieldwork might have influenced his pedagogical ideas. These questions should provide avenues for future research.

Above all, the authors emphasize that the success of the MIT experiment was not inevitable. It succeeded despite political opposition, academic rivalries, and a nearly constant lack of funds. Anyone interested in the history of MIT or the institutionalization of science in the United States will want to read this book. It will remain the standard reference on the early years of MIT for decades to come.