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The following short history is based on
an essay by Professor Stuart Gillmor, the biographer of Fred Terman, and
on conversations with and comments by a variety of historically minded
individuals, including Stanford Emeritus Professors Ron Bracewell and John
Linville. It also draws on Stuart Leslie's The Cold War and
American Science: The Military-Industrial Complex at MIT and Stanford
[Columbia University Press, 1993]. The history will be extended and
revised as time permits.
-- EE History Committee (Gene Franklin, Stuart Gillmor, Bob Gray)
The history of Electrical Engineering at
Stanford University can be traced along technical and professorial lines
with its birth in central power station engineering in 1893 with the
arrival of the first Professor of Electrical Engineering at Stanford,
F.A.C. Perrine, its extension to power transmission with the arrival of
H.J. Ryan in 1905, and its significant expansion into electronics and
radio communications with the arrival of F.E. Terman in 1925. The rest, as
they say, is history. This short narrative expands on the story of the
Department of Electrical Engineering in the context of the University and
the School of Engineering, from its inception through its first fifty
years.
Engineering has always been an important
subject at Stanford. In fact, Senator Leland Stanford's first idea for
establishing a memorial to his son was to "start a school or institution
for civil and mechanical engineers on my grounds at Palo Alto," but the
Reverend Augustus F. Beard successfully encouraged him to broaden his
concept to include a full university like Cornell. Senator and Mrs.
Stanford then visited Cornell, Yale, MIT ("Boston Tech"), and Harvard,
where President Eliot suggested that they endow a university, free of
tuition costs. Cornell and MIT in particular were to have a profound
influence on the early vision and later development of Stanford
University, and engineering was to play a continuing major role in the
University.
Stanford's first choice for President was
General Francis Amasa Walker, the President of MIT. Walker advised Senator
Stanford, visited the Stanfords in California, and was unsuccessfully
offered several times the amount of his MIT salary to become President of
the proposed new university. Frederick Law Olmsted was chosen as landscape
architect on Walker's recommendation. Senator Stanford next approached
Andrew Dickson White, the recently retired President of Cornell, and
offered him the Presidency. White declined but suggested a 40-year-old
former student, David Starr Jordan, who became Stanford's first president
in 1891.
Of the initial ten appointments to the
Stanford faculty, eight were in Science or Engineering. Of the first
twenty appointments to the faculty, ten were associated with Cornell. Even
the Stanford University color, Cardinal Red, was modeled after the Cornell
"Big Red." Other faculty had ties with MIT, Wisconsin, and Washington
University in St. Louis.
The University opened with 25
departments, including Civil Engineering, Mechanical Engineering, Mining
Engineering, and Military Science and Tactics. The 1891-92 enrollments
of the larger departments showed the early importance of Engineering,
with the largest enrollments in English, followed by Mechanical and Civil
Engineering.
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