7. Convergence of Interests

William Barton Rogers and the Idea of MIT

CHAPTER SEVEN

Convergence of Interests

ROGERS HAD ONLY two days to celebrate the start of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. On the morning of April 12, 1861, an old friend of his helped bring about an abrupt end to any optimism then occurring in the nation. That day Edmund Ruffin, Rogers’s old “marl” partner from his Virginia years, had woken up in a tent on the shores of South Carolina. Although he was no longer the young man of his earlier days with Rogers, Ruffin was surrounded by young men from all over the state. His primary affiliation that morning was with the so-called Palmetto Guard, but everyone there knew him as the fire-eating spokesman for the South. They believed his rhetoric of secession from the North, on the need to form a new southern nation based on southern values. They shared his vision of an independent confederacy of states that would protect above all the sanctity of the institution of slavery. They cheered him on from his tent as he approached a canon and fired a shot out into the water toward Fort Sumter. Had it been any other time or place, the blast wouldn’t have meant much. But as it turned out, he’d fired the first shot of the Civil War.¹

For Ruffin that day marked the start of a glorious campaign toward independence. For Rogers it meant that MIT would remain a mere idea for several years to come. During the Civil War Rogers nevertheless continued to be active in science, professionalization, and the promotion of the Institute. These activities gave him reasons to remain optimistic during and after the war. Scientists of the useful arts persuasion received unprecedented attention from the public as a result of the conflict. “Innovation is now very active in the war direction,” Rogers remarked, “and everyday discloses some new scheme for defence or destruction.” By the end of the war the useful arts had made an indelible impact on the public mind. Science, as applied toward military ends, had played a vital role in determining the outcome of the conflict. Industrial power, as associated with scientific and technological innovation, was perceived to have shaped the course of human events.²

But the war upset the balance of much of what Rogers and the nation had taken for granted. Even afterward, he found difficulties advancing the Institute’s cause. Whether raising an endowment or translating his idea into practice, Rogers’s path toward establishing MIT met no shortage of challenges. While facing these hurdles during and after the Civil War, he remained a staunch advocate of the useful arts ideal. As the scientific, professional, and educational interests Rogers held began to converge, he steadily sought to balance practical and theoretical interests.

A mere two months after the fall of Fort Sumter marking the end of the war, the state of Massachusetts asked Rogers to apply his scientific experience for practical ends. The legislature passed a bill authorizing Governor John A. Andrew to appoint an inspector of natural gas usage in the state. At first Rogers declined the generous offer, that included a comparatively large annual salary of three thousand dollars, an office, budget for experiments, and assistants to monitor the gas infrastructure. He had his mind on other matters, such as developing MIT and meeting the endowment requirements of the charter. The state appointment, he feared, would distract him from his work on the Institute. He offered the governor the names of two other scientists who could fulfill the duties of the position, John R. Rollins of Lawrence and A. A. Haynes. As specialists in chemistry, they would, he suggested, match “the business capacity, integrity, education, and scientific taste” needed for the position, and his “own inexperience with business matters” made him less qualified for the post. Andrew, however, refused to accept Rogers’s decision on the matter. The governor held a meeting with him and Haynes that ultimately persuaded Rogers to reconsider the offer. Rogers left convinced that he had everything to gain and little to lose by accepting the position. Acknowledging Rogers’s concern about being drawn away from the Institute, the governor assured him that at most the office would require only one or two hours per day of supervision. Assistants, Andrew made clear, would absorb most of the work.³

Rogers accepted the assignment and was quickly satisfied about his decision. He would have an office, he reflected, and “at the expense of the state, a perfect and complete set of standard gasometers, photometers and other essential apparatus of the most perfect patterns.” He believed that being exposed to the best equipment then available would help him decide on the best equipment to get for MIT. He also envisioned having an “expert assistant” or two, with whom he could conduct research “sufficiently scientific not to be distasteful.” The new state office intersected with Rogers’s ideals about the function of science for social ends. As he put it, the position would “stand between the consumer and gas companies.” If his task was to ensure public safety and advocate a rational approach for the distribution of a natural resource, he was sure to find professional satisfaction, not to mention valuable professional experience in the new post. In the end he expected “this office not to interfere much with [my] general science, and it may help on my Technological plans.” He decided to give it a year to see how it went.⁴

Between accepting the new position in late June and the second day of September 1861, when he began sending assistants into the field, Rogers looked for ideas abroad and at home to prepare for the task. In much the same way he corresponded about professional or educational matters, he turned to his brother Henry in Europe to learn about gas inspection. He began by asking Henry for literature related to illuminating gas. Wanting to be “armed in the completest manner possible,” William requested papers, documents, and advice on recent apparatus developed in Europe. Having trouble finding a well-known work, the Gas Inspector’s Manual he asked Henry to locate a copy in Great Britain. William also turned to domestic examples from which to learn about his new responsibilities, particularly in New York. There he expected to visit the “Gas Works laboratory,” which conducted similar work to what he planned to do in Boston. He wanted to take a few days “to look at the admirable arrangements . . . under [John] Torrey’s charge.”⁵

From documents sent by his brother and from experiences in New York, Rogers gained enough confidence to start a career in gas inspection. For nearly three years he set about verifying standards and delegating “meter-proving” to his assistants. He also assembled an arsenal of measuring equipment imported from London for estimating precisely the amount of gases distributed, released, or otherwise in use across the state. Although he lamented at times that his “gas engagement precludes much attention to purely scientific matters,” he took a serious interest in the operation and technologies of his office. From the post he began to urge fundamental changes to gas inspection that aimed for greater accuracy in measurement and improved public safety. One of the changes he recommended was examining gas meters by way of air, rather than gas, for controlling air was easier than controlling gases. By examining the meters with air, more precise data could be analyzed.⁶

Rogers accepted the role of inspector, hoping it would not consume much of his time. But within weeks of starting his duties, he became mired in the politics of his job. Most of the political turbulence he experienced involved two types of meters, wet and dry. Many small companies in the state had invested in wet meters. Gas companies and meter makers, meanwhile, preferred dry meters and had combined their political influence to exclude wet meters from use. Rogers found himself caught between these competing forces, for he had the authority to register or exclude whichever system he chose based on evidence he examined. “By the refusal of my seal and stamp,” he remarked, he realized he could damage the interests of one group or another. To help him with the decision, Rogers requested documents from Europe on the “merits or demerits” of wet meters and proceeded to have his assistants test approximately two thousand dry meters. While a majority of the dry meters passed Rogers’s test, he failed to pass many others. With his new instruments of measurement, he found that the previous methods used by the state were “very imperfect and fallacious.” Rogers’s scientific observations, however, had begun to jostle a political beehive. “A New York man, one of the largest manufacturers in the country,” Rogers commented in December 1861, “is now here for the purpose of learning why so many of his meters have been rejected by me, although sealed and stamped by the New York inspector.” Rogers planned to show the manufacturer tests that indicated flaws in the meter, hoping the tests would prompt improvements in the construction of meters. Following this incident with New York, Governor Andrew requested a report from Rogers. The report satisfied the governor and Rogers continued to be absorbed by the duties of his office. He later noted with pleasant surprise that “the leading manufacturers [there] are adopting my methods and standards.” With a record of improvements made in his first year, Rogers planned to resign the position and concentrate on MIT.⁷

The end of the first year came and went, however, without a resignation. Instead, Rogers was further drawn into the useful arts character of his work. In keeping with previous interests in technology development, he began to devise instruments to help him with his inspections. With assistance from local instrument makers, Rogers improved on test meters by “little contrivances” of his own construction: “I am just now completing a portable photometer . . . for comparative observation. The contrivances hitherto used for the purpose are very unreliable, but this will, I think, prove satisfactory.” He began to ask small companies to adopt the use of his instrument and noted that large companies would be required by law to have them. Toward the end of the second year as gas inspector, he proposed some research studies on gas: “I have been making some interesting experiments in my office upon the effect of different quantities of carbonic acid contained in coal gas upon its illuminating power.” Publications on the topic followed, but his time as inspector ended on February 1, 1864, when Rogers resigned. He told the governor of his plan to “devote myself to those educational plans which are hereafter to make large demands on my energy and time.”⁸

After this period in the inspector’s office, the state tapped Rogers for another science-related project. This time the duties were of a brief duration and involved an opportunity to travel abroad. Governor A. H. Bullock appointed Rogers to represent Massachusetts in the Universal Exposition of Paris in 1867. International exhibitions of the nineteenth century first began in midcentury London out of the desire to display the fruits of European industrialization. These fairs produced grand-scale exhibits of innovations in communication, transportation, and industry. They also sparked competition between nations in these perceived markers of progress. Situated on forty-one acres along the Seine, the 1867 exposition was organized around the theme “The History of Labour.” Rogers prepared for his visit to Paris, expecting to witness the development of machines of industry from the Stone Age to the latest manifestations of industrial society.⁹

Accompanied by his wife, Emma, and MIT chemistry professors Charles Eliot and Francis Storer, Rogers left for France in June 1867. Along the way, he planned excursions to see manufacturing innovations in Great Britain, such as “a new furnace, of which an account was given sometime since at our Institute, and which I was very desirous to see in action.” The originals of Watt’s steam engines, “which are still in daily use,” also captured his attention. Author Gustave Flaubert, also attending the fair, remarked: “It is overwhelming. It contains splendid and exceptionally curious things. . . . Someone who had three whole months at his disposal to visit the Expositions every morning and take notes could spare himself the trouble of ever having to read or travel again.” Rogers had precisely this kind of time at his disposal, and the work there consumed him, leaving little for anything but note-taking on the collections and presentations. With assistants on hand, Rogers set out to study “some of the departments of the useful arts, as here illustrated, with a view of gathering material for a Report.” The problem his team encountered had to do with the gargantuan size and scope of the exposition. “I have but one fault to find with it,” he commented, “which to superficial observers is, I suppose, its highest merit,—it is too vast.” An enormous basilica housed the main exhibits, arranged in such a way that observers could study innovations by industry in the “galleries” or by nation along the “avenues.” Outside stood a seemingly endless stream of smaller displays. He wished, instead, that only the “really new or original” was presented there, as he sifted through the collections of machines of production, science, and industry. The overwhelming number of exhibits and the sea of visitors, ranging from forty to sixty thousand individuals per day, made the task of gathering information for Massachusetts more difficult than he had expected. Still, Rogers concluded that the exposition “far transcends in richness and extent all that I had imagined.”¹⁰

From the visit to the Paris Expo, as from his work as state inspector, Rogers acquired valuable experience. These duties, the war, and emerging concerns about his health, however, limited his opportunities for doing scientific research. He wrote occasionally on such topics as new technologies and processes for measuring illuminating gas or descriptions of the measurement of electrical illumination in Boston. But during and shortly after the Civil War he shelved his larger program of research in geology and natural philosophy. Inspection work, the national conflict, and the trials of aging became increasingly burdensome, taking a toll on his health. Seldom specific about the ailments that plagued him, he stated, “I expect for some time yet to pay the penalty of my forgetfulness of this constitutional peculiarity.” His decline seemed particularly worse during periods in which his appointments demanded much of him and limited the range of interests he could follow. Thus, his program of research gave way to other activities in his profession.¹¹

While the number of his research efforts fell, Rogers’s involvement with organizing efforts continued. Not all of the appointments he received, however, were expected. In the antebellum years Rogers’s active participation in the founding of the American Association for the Advancement of Science made service appointments to those institutions understandable. Yet from organizations founded after the start of the war, he received two elected positions that took him by surprise.

One of the positions offered came from the American Social Science Association (ASSA), established in 1865. During its founding and formative years the ASSA had emphasized on investigatory commissions and civil service reform. With this intent in mind, members of the association voted for Rogers as their first president. Organizing members had at least four probable reasons for selecting him. First, Rogers symbolized the broad effort of professionalization in the United States. As a participant in the formation of the Association of American Geologists and Naturalists and, later, the American Association for the Advancement of Science, he had experience that they believed might serve them well. Second, as a published natural scientist, he represented a form of scientific inquiry that social scientists sought to adopt for themselves. Having conducted the Geological Survey of Virginia, published in the field of mechanical philosophy, and engaged in debates over evolution, Rogers’s work followed recognized patterns of scientific research. His internationalism gave members a third point of common interest. Founders of the ASSA depended to a large degree on models for similar organizations in Britain. Rogers’s association with British scientists and affiliation with several of their scientific societies would have had an inherent appeal to ASSA members. Perhaps more important than anything else was his interest in the useful arts. That he believed in a form of science that could be applied for practical purposes—while also retaining the credibility and authority of traditional science—likely attracted members of the social science community. In this light, Rogers, as their first president, would have been perceived as being helpful in establishing a scientific approach to social reform efforts. His previous activities as an organizer and promoter of science, defender of Darwinism, and advocate of the useful arts thus enhanced his appeal as a candidate among social scientists searching for leadership.¹²

In the end Rogers overcommitted himself and barely participated in ASSA activities. Most of the duties fell to such officers as recording secretary Frank Sanborn and corresponding secretary Samuel Eliot. State and MIT duties led Rogers to submit a letter of resignation in 1866. Sanborn, among others, persuaded Rogers to stay on for a time to provide continuity for the association.¹³

If the ASSA position took Rogers by surprise, another with the National Academy of Sciences (NAS) came as more of a shock. The academy began as an idea in the minds of select members of the Lazzaroni. Louis Agassiz and Alexander Dallas Bache, in particular, spearheaded the secretive launching of the organization. Working closely with Senator Henry Wilson of Massachusetts, Agassiz and Bache had shepherded a bill through Congress to incorporate the organization in 1863. The Civil War era called for some organizing body, the bill argued, to give oversight to the developments of science and technology research. To bolster the organization’s power and prestige, they claimed that only the most recognized scientists should be affiliated with the academy. The primary function, at its start, would be to give advice to government leaders on how best to spend its resources for the advancement of science and technology. Within a few years of its founding, the academy was fulfilling its role. The secretary of the Treasury requested recommendations on a uniform system of weights and measures, on protection from counterfeit currency, and on alternative metals for coinage. The navy requested solutions to problems associated with saltwater and its iron ships. Other government requests included critical reviews and evaluations of research as well as instruments.¹⁴

The secrecy surrounding the NAS’s founding, however, left an uneasy impression on Rogers and many other scientists. To the surprise of even some of the Lazzaroni, scientists such as Joseph Henry, who claimed no knowledge of the effort, the bill passed in a late-night session of Congress and later was signed into law by President Lincoln in the spring of 1863. Of the fifty incorporators, chosen by the Lazzaroni, Rogers believed several had, beyond their friendship with the founders, dubious qualifications; he also lamented that other scientists of prominence were excluded. In his view the NAS, while alleging objectivity in the selection of its members, marred its own launching by its favoritism.¹⁵

Rogers appeared among the list of incorporators and must have found it puzzling, considering his disagreements with the Lazzaroni over previous professionalization efforts. He questioned the process of incorporation, in which “only two or three of the men of science knew anything until the action of Congress was announced in the papers.” He wondered also about the composition of the list of incorporators: “[Josiah] Cooke and [Joseph] Lovering are left out, though many an unknown name is placed on the roll of honor.” Nevertheless, he went to the inaugural meeting held in New York in April 1863 and, from the start, was swept into the politics of the gathering that met at New York University. On his way to the meeting room, he met briefly with John William Draper, professor of chemistry at New York University, who hadn’t received an invitation. Draper, by this time, had a well-established reputation as a scientist who, like Rogers, was interested in both practice and theory. His published works included textbooks on chemistry and natural philosophy; his work in the area of photochemistry yielded gains in the field that made early forms of photography possible. He also became known for the Grotthus-Draper Law, a theory about the relationships between the absorption of light and chemical change. “Surprised” and “mortified” at the fact that NAS policies prevented Draper from appearing on the incorporator’s list, Rogers nevertheless proceeded to the meeting. According to him, members opened the first session by indulging in “exultation and mutual glorification.” Dissatisfied with this behavior and unafraid to speak his mind, Rogers began to raise concerns that he believed others had as well: “This . . . is a sad error,” he told the attendees, “if it be not a grievous wrong. Surely . . . there are many here who in their hearts must feel that they have no claim to be here when such men as I have named have been excluded.” The names he referred to included not only Draper but also astronomer George P. Bond, celebrated by the Royal Astronomical Society of London, Elias Loomis, on the science faculty at Yale, and Spencer Baird, zoologist and administrator at the Smithsonian Institution.¹⁶

Aware that friends Asa Gray and Theodore Lyman had chosen not to attend the meeting, Rogers began to question whether he should’ve bothered to be there at all. That only twenty-seven of the fifty incorporators stayed for the entire session in New York to organize the NAS added to his doubts. He soon discovered, however, that the burden of resisting the Lazzaroni fell upon him. They brought the “most objectionable provisions” to a vote, and he, virtually alone, stood in their way. Rogers, serving on a nine-member committee of organization led by Bache, waited till the very last moments of the opening session to deal with the issue of terms for NAS officers. Astonished that no one opposed life tenure for the offices of president, vice president, and secretary—Bache, James D. Dana, and Joseph Henry, respectively—he “let it pass without voting until, the morning’s task being closed, Bache was about shutting up his book. Then I rose, and calmly called their attention to this clause, told them that to exact that would be to blast every hope of success, and so impressed them with the responsibility of such a course that they voted the term of six years instead of life.” Although opposing the Lazzaroni had required “much use of [his] backbone,” Rogers found support among those gathered there, particularly from J. S. Newberry, director of the Ohio Geological Survey, and Stephen Alexander, astronomy professor at Princeton.¹⁷

The Lazzaroni received a bitter reminder of why they had broken from the American Association for the Advancement of Science in the first place. Rogers had pushed for democratic reforms, leading an anti-Lazzaroni movement that desired to expand its power in decision making and the election of officials. Now his presence promised similar tensions over the elite-run NAS. Benjamin Peirce of the Bache clique feared a backlash against the NAS. Following the meeting in April, Boston’s American Academy of Arts and Sciences voted to elect officers. “To show their hatred of the National Academy,” commented Peirce to Bache, “all its opponents combined to elect Gray as President and William B. Rogers as Recording Secretary” of the Academy of Arts and Sciences.¹⁸

In reversing Bache’s attempt at a tenure-for-life presidency of the NAS, Rogers touched off internal conflict. It didn’t take long for him to assume leadership of an opposition group. “I want to talk Academy to you,” mentioned Rogers supporter J. S. Newberry. “As you will have learned, it will be expanded and rendered more democratic and popular at the next meeting or expire. Which shall it be?” Newberry referred to the passing of leadership from Bache to Joseph Henry in 1865. Bache had become seriously ill, leaving executive duties to Henry, who reluctantly assumed the role after Dana resigned the vice presidency. With the Lazzaroni’s hold on the NAS eroding, Rogers’s circle became more assertive. Louis Agassiz soon found his attempt to reject the membership of zoologist Spencer Baird opposed by a majority of naturalists threatening to resign from the academy. By the end of his career Baird had over one thousand publications to his name, including major works on reptiles, mammals, and, his specialty, ornithology. Agassiz’s fight against Baird raised more suspicions about personality conflicts than it did questions of Baird’s credentials. Henry felt he needed to remind Agassiz that in “this Democratic country we must do what we can, when we cannot do what we would. We must expect to be thwarted in many of our plans.” Over the years following Henry’s assumption of NAS leadership, Rogers’s cohort supported a shift in policy that made “original research” the basis for membership.¹⁹

While Rogers tinkered with state science projects and professionalization activities during and after the war, he spent the bulk of his time attempting to keep the idea of MIT from evaporating. The war, however, made fund raising for education a difficult task. The same week bullets began to fly, the state gave him a one-year deadline to raise $100,000, a substantial sum for even flush times. As the conflict wore on, his prospects only worsened. He turned to two potential sources of stability during the first half of the war, one local and the other national. In the process he found that the philosophical and philanthropic underpinnings of the MIT idea clashed with those of Louis Agassiz and the Museum of Comparative Zoology.

Rogers first turned to private sources of support among Boston area philanthropists. Over two hundred citizens from Boston, Cambridge, and neighboring cities had registered their interest in MIT when the proposal went before the state legislature. Many of them donated small sums to the project during the first year of the war. A few offered large gifts. Among the most generous was Ralph Huntington’s $50,000 allotment to MIT in his will. Huntington, an industrialist, president of the Boston and Roxbury Company, and supporter of the idea of MIT, had been approached by Harvard for support, but he preferred Rogers’s plan. Even so, when the deadline of April 10,1862, arrived, Rogers had raised a mere fraction of the endowment requirement. Promises of future income, such as Huntington’s, may have brightened Rogers’s prospects, but the legislature wouldn’t recognize funding of this sort for the deadline at hand. Thus, two days before the legislature was scheduled to revoke the charter and take back the lots, Rogers convened an emergency meeting of MIT organizers. At the meeting he proposed drafting a formal statement accepting the charter and land while also petitioning state leaders for a one-year extension to raise funds for the endowment. Organizers agreed to the move. Rogers sent the acceptance and request and then waited anxiously to hear the state’s reply. Given the economic uncertainties produced by the war, the state assembly decided to grant Rogers another year.²⁰

Relieved as he was at the extension, he still wondered whether another twelve months would make any difference. The first year of the war had come and gone; young Bostonians, who might have enrolled at Harvard or MIT or elsewhere, prepared for military service rather than for their studies. Whatever money then circulating was being directed toward defeating the Rebels rather than at starting an institute.

Following the extension, Rogers organized MIT’s first official meeting on May 6, 1862. Institute members met to establish a constitution, bylaws, and a “government,” or “corporation.” The governing body was composed of a mix of intellectuals and industrialists who agreed to develop two of the three parts outlined in the Objects and Plan. The Society of Arts and the School of Industrial Science would come first; the museum, they decided, would come later. Also at the meeting, the government elected the Institute’s officers, including Rogers as president and a handful of vice presidents. Appointed to organize and oversee the first few month’s of MIT’s activities, Rogers moved forward with the Society of Arts, the research branch of the Institute. By December he gave the introductory address that launched the bimonthly conference on developments in the useful arts. The society engaged all manner of theoretical and practical issues related to “the mill, the farm, the machine shop, the laboratory, the shipyard, from the desk of the engineer and architect, the chair of science, the workman’s bench, the merchant’s counting room and all the other scenes where educated industry is at work.” The papers that followed in this and other meetings of the society dealt with a wide range of interests. Some reflected the military problems of the Civil War era, with presentations on “Sub-aqueous Gun Firing.” Others applied to perennial problems in the useful arts. The Society of Arts lasted eight years, and Rogers all the while kept active in this branch by preparing over thirty research-based presentations for its members.²¹

However much Rogers may have enjoyed participating in Society of Arts meetings, he still fretted about the looming deadline. He had raised virtually no new funds and began to worry whether he could meet the charter’s requirements. With local purse strings held tight, Rogers considered other avenues of support. If he followed the developments in Congress at the time, he would have learned that during the summer of 1862 the federal government had passed the land-grant appropriation act. The bill was hardly a new idea. Vermont senator Justin Morrill had talked for years about the need to establish federal support for agriculture and mechanics education. Because such proposals often failed at the local level, Rogers might not have thought much of the bill at the national level. When Morrill successfully pushed the bill through Congress and received the president’s signature in July 1862, Rogers became more curious. He began to wonder whether MIT could apply for land-grant funds. As mandated by the bill, states would receive thirty thousand acres of land in western territories for each of their congressional representatives. Consequently, the formula favored the more populous states, which received larger appropriations. Morrill’s bill allowed for states to then sell, rent, or otherwise derive an income from the scrip to finance the establishment of a new institution or to support existing ones. The legislation, however, required that those institutions receiving the funds must promote the education of agriculturists and mechanics of the state. Rogers had little reason to doubt that MIT could fulfill such a role. Indeed, one of the guiding premises of the Institute was the study and advancement of the mechanic arts.²²

In December 1862, the same month the Society of Arts held its first meeting, Rogers’s counterpart in science and professionalism, Louis Agassiz, began to maneuver for land-grant funds. Agassiz began to correspond with Governor John A. Andrew about how Massachusetts could best use the appropriation. At first Agassiz complained in vague terms that Harvard had “more the character of a high school than a University.” The Lawrence Scientific School, he asserted, had the potential for greatness on par with the state-supported universities of Europe. As it was, however, detractors could legitimately call the Science School mere “excrescences of the college proper.” In short, Agassiz argued that state support could raise the level of science at Harvard to match that of European institutions. He followed his complaints with more specific appeals for funds to support agriculture education, of which Harvard had little previous experience. Agassiz, by this time, had heard of a legacy left to his institution for the founding of the Bussey Institute of Agriculture. He used this development in his plea for the federal grant. “You might make a good beginning,” he remarked, “toward founding a University by combining your resources for the organization of an Agricultural College with those of Harvard to which a large legacy has been left for a similar purpose.” Coupling the $200,000 Bussey bequest with the Morrill funds, he assured the governor, would have far better effect than dispersing the funds across several institutions. By this Agassiz was referring to MIT and other potential candidates that might compete for the grant. He warned Andrew against dividing the funds with others, an act that “will provide nothing above mediocrity.” Harvard would comply with the Morrill legislation, he maintained, even with military drilling as required by the bill. Indeed, Agassiz went as far as to ask the governor to request such a program at Harvard ahead of any decision on the distribution of funds.²³

Of all the hinting and prodding, Agassiz’s next proposal struck Andrew as the most appealing. Drawing on the governor’s interest in MIT and hoping that Andrew might want to make a name for himself in American higher education, Agassiz began to suggest a merger between MIT and Harvard. If Agassiz could not convince the governor of Harvard’s commitment to mechanics and agriculturists, perhaps, he suggested, Harvard should simply acquire MIT for the purpose. I understand, Agassiz mentioned, “that the gentlemen who have contemplated the organization of a polytechnic school propose to press their scheme this winter.” If this is the case, he continued, “the opportunity should not be allowed to pass without making an effort to combine this plan with whatever may be done for an agricultural college and towards the founding of a great university.” When Agassiz penned these words, a mere five days had passed since the Society of Arts held its first meeting. MIT now posed a threat to his plans to draw all the land-grant funds for Harvard.²⁴

For every ounce of desire Agassiz might have had for the funds, Rogers could have matched five ounces of conviction that MIT should remain independent. If Rogers had known the Agassiz scheme, he would never have entertained it for long. Agassiz was likely aware of this, which explains why he went to Andrew about a merger rather than to Rogers himself. Rogers learned soon enough, however, about scheming of one sort or another from Andrew. In late December the governor asked Rogers to prepare a report on MIT’s progress. Andrew wanted to discuss some of the developments with the Institute at his annual address in January 1863. In the same request the governor also asked his opinion on a plan for the future of MIT. Without revealing the origins of the plan, Andrew asked Rogers whether combining Harvard and MIT might bring about good effect when coupled with the Morrill appropriation. As requested, Rogers replied with a detailed progress report on events related to the Society of Arts and the organization of MIT’s administration and governance. As for his opinion on the merger proposal, Rogers stopped the governor’s inquiry dead in its tracks. Without hesitation he replied to Andrew that “the institute had from the beginning determined to stand alone, that its independence was essential to its success, and that it would accept no grant . . . which should in the slightest particular interfere with this independence.”²⁵

Rogers brandished a bold response, considering he faced an empty coffer, a looming deadline, the prospects of losing MIT’s charter and lands, and no real alternatives for meeting the endowment requirements. But central to the idea of MIT was the notion of autonomy, a freedom to experiment with instructional methods, the curriculum, and approaches to science. Merging with Harvard, to Rogers’s mind, would bring the end of such autonomy, along with rigid traditions and, ultimately, the likely absorption of the Institute into the patterns of the Lawrence Scientific School. Not far removed from these concerns were the fundamental differences he had with Agassiz. Rogers had already seen how Agassiz had succeeded in transforming, at least in part, the original, largely applied mission of Lawrence’s program into an extension of his research that had little to do with utility or application. Agassiz lacked sincere interest in the useful arts and considered polytechnic schools an intermediate between trade and science, somewhat like “high schools, which are the necessary medium between the primary school and the university.” They had also been arch rivals in professionalism and science. The two had sparred with each other over the parameters of professionalization in science organizing. Where Rogers wanted open, democratic access to the election of officers, Agassiz valued a seemingly oligarchical approach. As for scientific research, Rogers favored the useful arts, the laboratory method, and Darwin’s views as expressed in Origin of Species. Agassiz emphasized natural history through museum work and the collection of zoological specimens, and he considered Darwin’s speculations anathema.²⁶

When it came to science in higher learning, both men valued observation as a mode of instruction, although through entirely different means. Agassiz believed in a view of science Rogers would have called “statistical,” one that emphasized counting similarities and differences between the structures of organisms for the purposes of cataloguing and classification. This approach required extensive museum collections and, as in Agassiz’s case, relied to a great extent on the naked eye for observation. “Agassiz used to lock a student up,” recalled psychologist William James, “in a room full of turtle shells or lobster shells or oyster shells, without a book or word to help him, and not let him out till he had discovered all the truths which the object contained.” According to another student, Samuel H. Scudder, “instruments of all kinds were interdicted. My two hands, my two eyes, and the fish: it seemed a most limited field.” Agassiz expected students to develop the faculty of observation by spending days examining the exact external features of a particular specimen. His philosophy of education centered on teacher silence. To awaken the faculty of observation, he argued, “I must teach and yet give no information. I must, in short, to all intents and purposes, be ignorant like you.” Agassiz, in large measure, hoped to prepare his students for the vast cataloguing work that stood before him at the Museum of Comparative Zoology. While it would be misleading to assume that no microscopes or study of internal structures, such as embryology, were used in the museum’s taxonomic work or Agassiz’s research, the primary instructional mode was not experimentalist in nature and, instead, favored observations that kept structure and composition intact.²⁷

Rogers, of course, had long advocated the use of laboratory instruction. He envisioned the decline of natural history and its “statistical” goals along with the rise of natural philosophy and the experiment. Subjecting structures of all kinds, organic and inorganic, to experiments, observing their reactions, and considering the relationships between the structures and those reactions held the keys to the future. Instruments, he believed, offered limitless opportunities to explore the parameters of nature, to discover new methods of instrumentation to probe the natural world, and to build new taxonomies for understanding natural phenomena. He was also convinced that these developments would bring about practical applications that should be investigated. MIT stood for each of these values through its commitment to the laboratory method. To Agassiz experimentation of this kind had limited value for the advancement of science as he understood it. For him a true taxonomic system, based on untampered structural characteristics, had already been established, and newer ideas offered distractions from the natural historical goal of science.²⁸

Harvard president Thomas Hill, a friend of Agassiz, also competed with Rogers when he wrote to Governor Andrew about the Morrill appropriation. Days before the 1863 annual address, Hill discussed with Andrew the ways in which federal funds would benefit the Science School and the Bussey Institute, mentioning nothing of the merger proposal. His silence, perhaps nothing more than an oversight, may have reflected an uneasiness with Rogers’s useful arts approach to science. Rogers, whose scientific research had involved traversing rugged mountain terrain, enduring adverse weather, and soiling his hands with earthen materials and laboratory chemicals on such projects as the Virginia survey, was likely to encourage his pupils to do the same. Hill, meanwhile, warned students against overexerting themselves in physical labor, claiming to have injured a testicle while weeding his garden. Rogers’s association with Darwinism would not have helped Agassiz’s merger plan either. Hill, a former Unitarian minister, held as much contempt for evolution as its staunchest critics. Whatever the case, Harvard’s president didn’t actively promote the merger scheme and became, as Rogers put it, one among many “rushing in to claim a slice of the loaf which comes to the State from the land grant.”²⁹

If Rogers’s flat rejection of the plan and Hill’s silence were intended to warn Andrew, the governor missed the message. He spoke at the 1863 address about the potential opportunities in combining MIT, Harvard, and the land-grant funds for the promotion of a true university. In short the governor sided with Agassiz, declaring a need to join “the Institute of Technology and the Zoological Museum.” He imagined the two institutions “working in harmony” with Harvard College, securing “for the agricultural student for whom [Massachusetts] thus provides, not only the benefits of the national appropriation, but of the Bussey Institution and the means and instrumentalities of the Institute of Technology, as well as those accumulated at Cambridge.” Agassiz might as well have delivered the address, for it followed the zoologist’s plan to the letter.³⁰

State leaders began mulling over the idea of a merger, which made Rogers feel increasingly uneasy. He never discounted “secret forces [that] continue to avert present action.” By “secret forces” it is unlikely he meant anything other than Agassiz’s circle and their plan that had gained the attention of Governor Andrew. Aware of the interest in a Harvard and MIT, Rogers went before the legislature to plead his case for the Institute’s independence. In a meeting lasting several hours Rogers discussed with state officials the functions of the Institute and requested “one half, or at least one third of the proceeds.” He understood the constraints of the bill, that none of the funds could be used for the construction of buildings, and knew that a separate MIT fund for the purpose had accrued ten thousand dollars.³¹

His unease continued, however, and for good reason. When a legislative committee issued a final report, its members still hadn’t reached an agreement. The majority of the legislators praised the governor’s plan to merge Harvard and MIT. The plan, they acknowledged, had been “warmly commended by many of the leading men of the state.” A minority within the committee responded similarly at first, repeating the governor’s statements against dividing the funds across institutions. But ultimately, the minority opinion rejected the governor’s merger proposal, basing its decision on presentations made by agriculture and trade representatives. In the final report recommendations by the entire committee came in three parts. The state, first of all, should accept the land-grant appropriation from Congress. Second, the land scrip should be sold at market value, the proceeds of which should remain in a trust. And, third, the state should distribute the interest from the trust according to a predetermined formula. One-tenth of the interest, the committee recommended, should provide for the purchase of land on which to build an agricultural college. Of the remaining interest, one-third would fund MIT, and two-thirds would go to the development of the agricultural college. The report appeared in March 1863 and became law the following month. Rogers, while not interfering with the basic interests of the agricultural community, had managed to preserve the idea of an independent institute. For the agriculturists Amherst made more sense than Boston. The rural site and land-grant funds gave rise to the University of Massachusetts system.³²

In order to accept the proceeds, Rogers’s Objects and Plan needed a few adjustments. MIT, as originally conceived, had no program of “military tactics.” As required by the Morrill bill, any institution receiving the federal funds would have to provide students with military instruction. The Institute also had to open its governing board to three state leaders: the governor, the chief justice of the supreme judicial court, and the secretary of the board of education. The legislation required ex officio membership in MIT’s governing board for each of the public officials. The final adjustment required an annual report for the governor, a report that outlined developments at MIT in conformity with the land-grant act. Based on the reports or otherwise, the state reserved the right to cease its yearly appropriation to the Institute if MIT failed to meet the requirements as mandated by the legislation. By the middle of summer 1863 Rogers had submitted a formal acceptance of the grant and its conditions.³³

Agassiz had little reason to mourn his political defeat to Rogers for very long. The Museum of Comparative Zoology at Harvard continued to receive generous support from benefactors drawn to his mode of science and education. Governor Andrew, however, felt a sense of failure well after his campaign for the MIT-Harvard merger. His annual address of 1865 lamented the failed plan for a grand university. He claimed to have been overruled by “the better judgment of the Legislature as to the views which I had the honor to present at length” about the merger idea in 1863. “Although I remain more fully convinced than ever,” he reflected, “after two intervening years, of their substantial soundness, I have felt it to be my official duty cordially to co-operate. . . . My own idea of a college likely to be useful . . . is one perhaps not yet to be realized.” The governor repeated his lamentations to agriculturalists the same year. In addition, he hinted at his inability to challenge the political forces behind the Joint Special Committee recommendation. Then as now, he remarked, “I do not think that the views which I entertain upon the subject of an agricultural college are those which, at this moment are quite popular in the Commonwealth among the farmers.” He felt certain that his personal ambitions to create what he considered a true university, as defeated by the legislature, were at odds with the desires of the agricultural and trade communities. ³⁴

For as pleased as Rogers may have been about the committee’s recommendations, he had still made little progress on the endowment. When news about the Morrill funds reached him, he had only a few weeks left before the April 10, 1863, deadline. With the extension about to expire, the Institute had raised less than half of the required $100,000. Rogers circulated a desperate plea to New England philanthropists for support. Small donations followed, and Rogers promptly replied with letters of gratitude. But a seemingly insurmountable sum needed to be raised when, on the very last day before the charter was to expire, William J. Walker, a Boston-area physician and philanthropist, pledged $60,000. On that day the idea of MIT cleared its final legal hurdle.³⁵

With the charter, lands, and endowment in place, Rogers could begin thinking seriously about the first day of MIT classes. He still lacked a definite plan for the School of Industrial Science, not to mention a faculty, building, or student body. Thus, for the eighteen months that followed the summer of 1863, he focused on assembling the school’s needs.

Rogers spent part of this period preparing the Scope and Plan of the School of Industrial Science, the foundation for the Institute’s curriculum. The goal of the school was to offer “instruction in the leading principles of science” in relation to the useful arts. He included in the document a detailed description of a two-part plan of instruction, one for special students and the other for regular students. The program for special students involved the outreach activities alluded to earlier in the Objects and Plan. For these students, and for the general public, the Institute would offer “opportunities for instruction in the leading principles of science, as applied to the arts.” Instruction for the “public at large,” which included interested citizens of “both sexes,” would occur in evening lectures to avoid interfering with workday schedules. The lectures aimed at “such useful knowledge as they [special students] can acquire without methodical study and in hours not occupied by business.” Elementary courses suited for public lectures would cover such areas as mathematics, physics, chemistry, geology, botany, and zoology. Each of the courses would emphasize the “facts and scientific principles which are of leading importance in connection with the useful arts.” For these students Rogers required no examinations or laboratory exercises but expected common decorum, or, as he put it, “conditions and restraints,” during public lectures. Unlike the regular MIT program, the plan for special students allowed only for lectures.³⁶

Regular students, on the other hand, faced daytime schedules, a battery of examinations, and a wide range of laboratory instruction. Although courses offered during the day occasionally resembled offerings provided in the evening, daytime classes employed a program of “systematic and professional instruction.” Regular students would follow a partially prescribed, partially elective curriculum designed to prepare them for scientific and practical fields. Students could specialize in one of five program areas, including architecture, chemistry, geology, and two kinds of engineering (civil and topographical; mechanical). To this Rogers and the Institute would later add a sixth degree in general science and literature, for those wanting advanced theoretical training. In concert with the useful arts ideal, the plan aimed to offer students theory in the first two years followed by practical studies in the remaining two. To enroll in any program area, applicants no younger than sixteen would have to pass an entrance exam. Once enrolled, students faced monthly, midterm, and final examinations on material covered in the coursework. Rogers also required degree candidates to take comprehensive tests covering courses from all four years and prepare a thesis, although he allowed for some flexibility for experienced students in the regular program. Recent graduates of other colleges and universities, for instance, could apply for advanced standing, if they could show proficiency in the required introductory coursework. In some cases regular students could complete the prescribed course in three years. For the most part, however, those with college-level science experience would still find distinct academic requirements and challenges at the Institute. MIT differed from other science schools by emphasizing laboratory instruction and a comprehensive program of study that allowed for specialization. Rogers expected that his proposal would thus draw students or graduates from other institutions and assumed that most of them would enroll for the entire four years.³⁷

He left little doubt about the centrality of the laboratory for regular students. “While attending lectures on the various branches” of science, he made clear, they “will have the benefits of laboratory exercises in manipulation and analysis.” Rogers promised students a “practical familiarity” with the apparatus of the day through these exercises. The instruction would include the use and adjustment of laboratory equipment, experience with the materials commonly analyzed, and training in “the more important experiments and processes in natural philosophy and chemistry.” Small classes would receive direct guidance from faculty in preparing, executing, and analyzing work in the experimental sciences.³⁸

To this end Rogers described four specific laboratories that the Institute would establish: the Laboratory of Physics and Mechanics, the Laboratory of General Chemical Analysis, the Laboratory for Mining and Metallurgy, and the Laboratory for Industrial Chemistry. The Laboratory of Physics and Mechanics would house implements necessary for the study of physical processes. The strengths of materials; the flow of air, water, and light; the power of machinery, all required special apparatus and a separate area in which to store the instruments. Rogers envisioned rooms filled with microscopes, barometers, thermometers, hygrometers, dynamometers, burners, lamps, and even “a room fitted up for photometry” in which students could learn to measure light as produced by such materials as gases. The Laboratory of General Chemical Analysis would provide for the qualitative and quantitative analysis of organic and inorganic materials. At least two years of courses in basic, or, in his words, “general,” science at the Institute would be required as preparation for work in this laboratory. The Laboratory for Mining and Metallurgy, affiliated with the General Chemical laboratory, would emphasize practical mineralogy, or “the chemical valuation of ores, and the operations of smelting and other processes for the separation and refining of materials.” Students of mining and metallurgy would learn to discriminate rocks and minerals by way of “mechanical and chemical tests.” Rogers coupled the laboratory exercises with instruction on models of mining and examples of equipment used in the extraction of earthen materials. In addition to the General Chemical laboratory, Rogers proposed the Laboratory for Industrial Chemistry. “The more important chemical arts and manufactures” would be the focus in this department. Students would follow similar processes illustrated in other departments but with different materials. Rather than unrefined ores or basic organic or inorganic substances, industrial chemistry called for “dyestuffs, mordants, discharges and other substances used in the operations of dyeing, color printing, and bleaching.”³⁹

All four of the laboratories shared both the common goal of practical instruction for regular students and a research mission. If commissioned by the MIT government or its branches represented by the Society of Arts and the Museum of Arts, the laboratories “will be used for the prosecution of experiments and investigations, . . . examination and testing of new machines and processes, and the conducting of original research.” Advanced students, Rogers believed, would benefit by assisting in such research led by faculty or others.⁴⁰

During the period in which Rogers prepared the Scope and Plan, he brought together, sifted, and refined all of the ideas about technical institutes he had collected over the years. Many of them came from Europe, especially France but also Germany. The homefront had less to offer. The use of the laboratory for student instruction had not been given serious attention within American higher learning. Some medical schools, colleges, and institutes allowed for limited experiences with expensive apparatus, but the costs for most institutions not founded for the purpose of science proved to be prohibitive. Rogers looked abroad once more and collected plans from programs he found compatible with the useful arts. Building on what he knew of French scientific studies, William corresponded with Henry for information on programs in Great Britain. “Can you get me any drawings and descriptions,” he asked, “of the interior of the Technology department at Edinburgh, and the School of Mines, Jermyn Street? All information of a specific kind relating to the fitting up and working of practical laboratories . . . will be of great value to me.” Henry responded by sending his brother plans of instruction and other materials about the Kensington Museum and the School of Mines.⁴¹

After completing his final survey of institutions abroad, Rogers put the finishing touches on the Scope and Plan. A final draft emerged in time for the annual meeting of the MIT government held on May 30, 1864. The governing body approved the document at the gathering, making it the Institute’s first curriculum.⁴²

In part to alleviate his failing health and in part to satisfy his continued interest in science instruction abroad, Rogers set sail for Europe a few days after MIT accepted his Scope and Plan. He had two educational goals while on his tour: to collect and inspect. He wanted to gather models while in Britain and the Continent for use in the Institute’s varied program areas. He looked for models that he hoped would aid in the instruction of students at MIT. Students, he contended, should learn from models of “machinery, or bridges, roofs, arches and other works of civil construction and architecture.” Aware of this plan, the Institute’s governing board granted him one thousand dollars to purchase equipment. Rogers also left for Europe with a plan to inspect “the recent and best arrangements for working-laboratories and lecture-rooms.” After visiting several places of interest, he found useful the organization of “Archer’s Museum” and the Kensington Museum but left Europe uninspired by its laboratory arrangements. “As for laboratories and lecture-rooms are concerned,” he remarked about his tour, “I believe we have little to learn either in England or Paris.” Thus, in the fall of 1864, following his expedition, he turned his attention to assembling a faculty for the first day of classes.⁴³

Rogers set February 1, 1865, as the date MIT would open its doors to students and launch the plan of instruction. While the war still worked against the prospects of opening the Institute, Union victories had turned the tide clearly against the rebellion. The idea of MIT could claim more attention in this new context than was previously possible. To meet the goal he had established, Rogers began to recruit faculty. For the chair of mathematics he selected John D. Runkle. A graduate of Harvard’s Lawrence Scientific School, former pupil of Benjamin Peirce, and affiliate of the Mathematical Monthly, Runkle was suited to fill the theoretical needs of the useful arts mission at MIT. As an original member and early promoter of Rogers’s first educational proposals before the legislature, Runkle knew well the mission of the Institute. For the professorship of mechanical engineering William Watson had a stronger applied background than that of Runkle. After graduating from Harvard College, Watson stayed with the institution as an instructor of mathematics. He left, after a time, for further study at the Ecole des Ponts et Chaussees in Paris, where he became immersed in civil engineering. After his return to Harvard as a lecturer, Rogers lured the engineer to teach at MIT. Francis H. Storer was recruited for the professorship of general chemistry, Ferdinand Bocher for French, and W. T. Carlton for drawing. Rogers, meanwhile, assumed the professorship of geology and physics, in addition to his work as president of the Institute. The humanities, it should be noted, were not overlooked. William P. Atkinson filled the professorship of English Language and Literature, and in later years George Howison taught Philosophy of Science and Logic. With this collection of faculty, Rogers could argue that the Institute had addressed calls for modernizing American higher learning.⁴⁴

Although he missed his original goal by nineteen days, Rogers wrote in his diary for February 20, 1865: “Organized the School! Fifteen students entered. May not this prove a memorable day.” The oft-cited entry refers to the first classes held at a rented space in the Mercantile Building in downtown Boston. Construction on the Back Bay lands would take another year before Rogers could hold his lectures and laboratory instruction on the lots. In the meantime the Institute held a preliminary session for students desiring preparation for its official opening expected in the fall. When the fall session arrived, Rogers greeted seventy students and five additional faculty members.⁴⁵

Of the five new professors, Rogers had taken a special interest in recruiting Charles W. Eliot. After having studied and held an instructorship at Harvard, Eliot went to Europe during the Civil War to further his training in chemistry. While abroad, he visited all the “great and well-organized Polytechnic Schools,” including those of “Paris, Karlsruhe, Stuttgart, Zurich, [and] Vienna.” He worked in the famous Kolbe laboratory toward the end of his tour and acquired an interest in the useful arts. Eliot learned of the great advantages of European manufacturers in having the support of such institutes and the “difficulty for American manufactures” who lacked similar support. “Science, whether pure or applied,” he remarked, “is not yet naturalized in the United States. . . . when the American people are convinced that they require more competent chemists, engineers, artists, architects than they have now, they will somehow establish the institutions to train them.” Rogers and the Institute’s faculty were instructing their preliminary students for precisely these ends when Eliot made his observations. Eliot’s years in Europe had left him largely unfamiliar with the emergence of MIT. Although he had maintained correspondence during his tour abroad with his old friend Francis H. Storer, who had become a professor there, Eliot’s attention was directed elsewhere. One of the leading textile companies in New England had sent him an offer that most believed he could not refuse: the superintendency of a mill factory in Lowell, Massachusetts, a five thousand—dollar annual salary, and rent-free housing. On the surface the offer agreed with Eliot’s taste for administration. If he chose to make a start in the manufacturing world, few better offers would come his way. On the other hand, accepting the invitation would likely mark the end of his academic career, in which he had invested the previous decade and his time in Europe.⁴⁶

To Rogers’s surprise and relief, Eliot turned down the superintendency. Upon hearing of Eliot’s decision, Rogers immediately dispatched a letter to Europe, offering him a chemistry professorship at the Institute. With the fall session, beginning October 1865, a mere four months away, it might have seemed like a long shot. From Rogers’s point of view, however, Eliot matched the Institute’s useful arts mission in ways that many others could not. “My great anxiety now,” he wrote to Eliot in June 1865, “is to make a good faculty of instruction, and I want you to be one of the number.” Aware of the friendship between Storer and Eliot, he suggested that the two of them could share the duties of teaching in the chemistry department and could work out between them what branches, general or industrial, each would direct. Eliot found the offer intriguing, but, because of his lack of familiarity with MIT, he requested more information about the Institute’s founding principles. Rogers and Storer responded by showering Eliot with information and “pamphlets,” which likely included the Objects and Plan and the Scope and Plan. Rogers emphasized the secured endowment, progress on the building located on the Back Bay, and plans under way for a comprehensive “working laboratory.” In addition, Rogers made clear the kind of administrative approach adopted by the Institute. “Long experience has taught me,” he informed Eliot, “the importance of giving to each professor a wide latitude in the choice and use of his plans and means of instruction, making him, in fact, within reasonable limits, the sovereign in his department.” Rogers’s letter persuaded Eliot that they shared mutual scientific and educational interests, for in late July 1865 Eliot sent an acceptance letter from Paris. Eliot needed no further coaxing; he called Rogers’s points “very satisfactory” and described himself as contented and gladdened by the opportunity.⁴⁷

With Eliot’s acceptance the chemistry department felt complete to Rogers. Following his efforts in recruiting faculty, however, came concerns over construction on the Back Bay. Delays caused Institute faculty and students to return in the fall to rented spaces in the Mercantile Building area. The spring term of 1866 fared slightly better. The main MIT building on Boylston Street by then had walls, a roof, and two finished rooms. One lecture hall and a laboratory could be put to use, but the rest needed finishing. After a year of delays, Rogers finally moved all functions of the Institute to the Back Bay in time for the fall term of 1866. In the basement of what came to be known later as the Rogers Building, students practiced exercises in the laboratories for general, geological, and industrial chemistry. The first floor housed the president’s office, lecture rooms, and the physics laboratory, in addition to a meeting room and office space. Lectures in mathematics, civil engineering, modern languages, and astronomy, were delivered on the second floor. A “half story floor,” between the second and third, provided for museums and library space, lecture and modeling rooms, and two faculty studies. The third floor was dedicated to drawing, modeling and lectures rooms for architecture, mechanical engineering, and mathematics as well as additional office spaces. The fourth and final floor held faculty offices, a photographic laboratory, and a freehand drawing room.⁴⁸

Characteristic of Rogers’s useful arts ideal, the kind of spaces created for MIT reflected a dualism between theory and practice. The exterior of the building, elegant and classical, alluded to the theoretical aims of the Institute. Its facade, with four classical columns over the main entrance, drew on the imagery of antiquity and would have called to mind knowledge and scholarship of transcendent value. The interior, particularly the metallurgical laboratory, was radically stark, by contrast. On plain brick surfaces stood wooden boxes filled with supplies, next to an array of pipes, tools, vents, and furnaces that resembled the floor of an industrial factory. To Rogers’s mind, however, the difference between the Institute and a common factory was that factories produced commodities, whereas the Institute sought the production and advancement of knowledge.⁴⁹

For two years Rogers took pleasure in seeing the useful arts principles in the Objects and Plan and Scope and Plan come to fruition. But the challenges he had experienced in reaching that point were not without costs. At a faculty meeting at the start of the fall term of 1868, Rogers began to feel uncomfortably hot. Dismissing the hot flash at first, he soon felt giddy and faint. Nevertheless, he continued at the meeting until paralysis struck the left side of his face and, in midsentence, found his “articulation . . . oddly obstructed.” No one expected what was to follow.⁵⁰