1907 - 1921

H. Diemer	L.A. Harding	J.A. Moyer	F.P. Fessenden

In the fall of 1907, John Price Jackson, one of the first three mechanical engineering graduates succeeded Reber as dean of the School of Engineering. In 1892, Jackson received the first graduate degree awarded by the department. Previously the head of the college's electrical engineering department, Jackson was both friend and brother-in-law to Reber. He was well aware of Reber and Atherton's past efforts on behalf of engineering education and was one of their strongest supporters.

Hugo Diemer, an alumnus of Ohio State who had established a pioneering program of engineering management at the University of Kansas, became the head of mechanical engineering in 1907. Diemer had worked both as a teacher and as a consultant to private industry. Drawing on his professional experiences, he prepared a proposal for blending the principles of scientific management espoused by Frederick Taylor with those of engineering education. Dean Jackson recognized the benefit this would have on engineering education and, with the trustees' blessing, implemented a two-year course in industrial engineering within the Department of Mechanical Engineering. By 1909, this course had become so popular that a four-year curriculum was developed. Shortly thereafter, the Department of Industrial Engineering was formed with Diemer as head. This department absorbed the two-year mechanic arts course and became the first department of its kind in the nation. In 1909, Louis Harding became head of the Department of Mechanical Engineering. Previously, Harding was an engineer at Armstrong Cork Company in Lancaster, Pennsylvania.

A new degree program of milling engineering was created within the Department of Mechanical Engineering in 1912. The program was the result of a request by the Pennsylvania State Millers Association that Penn State provide a course for training flour mill engineers. The association underwrote most of the related costs, so Penn State was glad to comply. Benjamin W. Dedrick, a nationally recognized expert in the field, became the program's head. A temporary mill was constructed in one of the new engineering annexes (Unit F). Within a few years, Dedrick obtained a grant from the U.S. Department of Agriculture to devise methods to prevent dust explosions in flour mills. This was the first research grant received by the School of Engineering.

To appreciate the evolution of the Department of Mechanical Engineering, it is important to examine the role of the Engineering Experiment Station. The two organizations are intertwined. Efforts to establish the Engineering Experiment Station were begun by Dean Reber and were completed under Dean Jackson in 1911. The mission of the station was to study problems of interest to industry. (The activity was "research," but the phrase did not command the attention or elicit the reverence it does today). In many ways the Engineering Experiment Station was to be analogous to the Agricultural Experiment Station. Penn State's Agricultural Experiment Station was established in 1887 and funded (in part) directly by the federal government under the Hatch Act. Agricultural experiment stations at land-grant universities were highly successful, and it was Reber and Jackson's hope that engineering experiment stations could follow suit. Unfortunately that never happened. The federal government refused to support engineering experiment stations although urged to do so by many industries and engineering professional societies of the day. In addition, agricultural experiment station personnel did not favor expanding their mission to include the full range of engineering interests. The Pennsylvania legislature was not interested in funding the Engineering Experiment Station as a separate item either; consequently the station was funded from the general University budget and moneys obtained as separate grants from industry or government. In 1909, the trustees approved the creation of the Engineering Experiment Station. After its formation, faculty interested in conducting research in the station did so on a part-time basis, in addition to their teaching duties. From the outset, mechanical engineering faculty took an active role in the Engineering Experiment Station.

The decision to separate instruction from research and to create separate administrative units for each activity proved in later years to be unwise. At the time, however, Penn State was predominantly an undergraduate teaching institution, and nearly fifty years would pass before the institution would embark on a new mission as a research university. During the 1950s, the station was gradually disbanded, and the research activities and personnel were assigned to the respective baccalaureate degree programs.

Impressed with the railroad practicum, the Pennsylvania Railroad donated a dynamometer car with greater capacity than the earlier car the students had constructed. The department now had the equipment and facilities to offer a four-year course of study in railway mechanical engineering under A. J. Wood. In 1912, the railroad made an outright gift of the equipment it previously had lent to the University. In 1915, Wood wrote the text Locomotive Operation and Train Control for McGraw Hill Publishing Company. A second edition was published in 1925.

Mechanical engineering students were also involved in the study of aerodynamics. In early 1911, a circular track 200 feet in diameter was constructed. Dubbed the "aeroplane test track," it provided students with an opportunity to study aerodynamic lift, as well as the effects of wind resistance on various automobile grills. Experiments were conducted by a small 20-horsepower car that circled the track at speeds up to 48 miles per hour.

Another significant event of 1911 was the completion of the Thermal Laboratory Building. Professor of Mechanical Engineering Louis A. Harding designed the cork-lined laboratory, which could maintain constant low temperatures over long periods of time. Calorimetry was not a technique new to Penn State. In 1898, Henry D. Armsby, director of the Agricultural Experiment Station, built a calorimeter for farm livestock. A large animal such as a cow or horse was confined in an airtight enclosure; controlled amounts of food and water were fed to the animal, and the animal's waste, water evaporation, and exhaled air measured in ways that enabled Armsby to compute a complete energy balance. The facility was the first of its kind and brought international acclaim to Armsby and Penn State. (The facility, which remains standing, is used as a museum.)

The Thermal Laboratory became the best facility in the country for studying the heat transfer properties of building materials. The building (and subsequent additions) stands today and is part of the foundry in the Department of Industrial Engineering, located between the Mechanical Engineering Building and Engineering Unit E. The Thermal Laboratory gave students the opportunity to study the properties and effects of heat transmission, refrigeration, and insulation. The department's first research contract was awarded by the Pennsylvania Department of Highways to the college for a study of the effects of extreme temperatures on various types of pavement.

L. A. Harding left Penn State for Cornell University, then went on to an extremely successful career in private industry, and became president of a steel company. In 1958, his widow, Charlotte Hanes Harding, willed $300,000 for a loan fund for mechanical engineering students in honor of her husband. After Harding's departure, A. J. Wood directed his research and ran the Experiment Station.

Between 1908 and World War I, the buildings called the "Engineering Units" were constructed. After the legislature rejected L. E. Reber's plans to double the size of the Main Engineering Building in 1908, General Beaver (former governor and long-time influential trustee) and a few acquaintances raised $8,000 to build the Engineering Annex. The building was a long, two-story wooden structure, located a short distance behind the President's House (the space is currently the east end of the parking lot behind the Mechanical Engineering Building). Subsequently the building became known as Engineering Unit F. This prosaic structure (see photo, below left) provided space that could be used for a variety of functions. The building was removed in the mid-1950s. In the years prior to World War I, President Sparks secured funds from the legislature for the construction of a large, two-story brick building called Engineering Unit D. Identical structures called Units A, B, C, and E were built shortly thereafter (see photo, below right). Between these units and College Avenue were railroad tracks that led to the rear of the Main Engineering Building. Units A-E are actively used today, although their ornate arched doorways and slate roofs were removed and third floors and flat roofs were added in the mid- 1950s.

Extension education in mechanical engineering grew rapidly in the years prior to World War I. More than a thousand employees of the Pennsylvania Railroad attended extension courses across the state. Many regions of the state requested that engineering extension courses be offered; however, funds were lacking. Dean Jackson served as acting director of extension services because funds were not available to hire a full-time director. Jackson even had to pay his own travel expenses for extension activities.

Above: Engineering Unit F, circa 1935. The unit was torn down in mid-1950s.
Right: Engineering Units B, C, D, and E as seen in the early 1930s.

Dean Jackson left Penn State in 1913 for a temporary assignment with the state government in Harrisburg. He would never return to Penn State and academic life. After six years in state government, interrupted by one year's service in the U.S. Army as a colonel during World War I, Jackson joined the Consolidated Edison Company in New York City and retired in 1938.

James Moyer, professor of mechanical engineering at Penn State, succeeded L. A. Harding as department head in 1912 and replaced John Price Jackson as acting head of extension education in 1914. Robert Lemuel Sackett assumed the position of dean of the School of Engineering in 1915. R. L. Sackett received his engineering degree from the University of Michigan and, prior to becoming dean at Penn State, was professor of sanitary and hydraulic engineering at Purdue. He was a nationally recognized expert in municipal sanitation and was adviser to several Indiana governors. He had a commanding stature and a demeanor to match, yet he was deeply concerned about the welfare of students and reputation of the School of Engineering. In 1915, Penn State had an enrollment of 2,024 undergraduate students; 761 were engineering students, and of these, 174 were studying mechanical engineering (see photo below). Engineering classes were conducted in the Main Engineering Building, Engineering Units, and a few smaller buildings including the campus power plant, the college's sewage treatment facility (completed in 1915), and the thermal laboratories, which were now run by A. J. Wood, who had assumed Harding's research in the field of heat transfer and refrigeration.

Graduating class of Mechanical Engineers in 1915.

Moyer's term as head of mechanical engineering ended in 1915. He received national acclaim for his work in furthering the cause of engineering extension education, and as a result was offered the position of director of the technical extension program in Massachusetts. He accepted the position, and Dean Sackett assumed the responsibility as acting head of the Department of Mechanical Engineering. Edward P. Fessenden, formerly a faculty member at the University of Missouri, became the new head of mechanical engineering in the fall of 1916.

Fred M. Waring was a freshman in mechanical engineering in 1918. In 1859, his great-grandfather, William G. Waring had been acting principal of the Farmers' High School, a professor of Horticulture, and one of the original four faculty members. The Waring dormitory is named in his honor. Fred Waring left Penn State to pursue a career in music. Over the next sixty years, he and his choral ensemble "The Pennsylvanians" acquired an international reputation. He died in 1984 while on tour at Penn State. In addition to his musical talents, Fred Waring was a successful businessman and inventor of household appliances, the most famous of which was the Waring Blendor (predecessor to the food processor).

Student enrollment, which had increased so dramatically since the turn of the century, had to be limited because of inadequate classroom space. Penn State was now forced to deny admission to qualified students. Repeated appeals by Sackett and President Edwin E. Sparks for increased funds were largely ignored by the legislature. (By 1920, more than 2,500 qualified students had been denied admission to the School of Engineering, and the school dropped from sixth to tenth in size in the nation in terms of total engineering student enrollment).

America's support of Great Britain and eventual entry into the war in 1917 produced dramatic changes. The School of Engineering provided instruction in a variety of technical courses for enlisted personnel in a series of six- and eight-week courses. Many of the faculty were either involved in these programs or had received commissions and were instructing troops on active duty in technical subjects. Students were equally supportive of the war effort. In 1917, many students accepted early spring dismissals either to enlist or to work wherever they might be needed because of labor shortages.

In fall 1918, the largest freshman class ever was admitted to the School of Engineering. Within a few months of their arrival, World War I ended. The School of Engineering had done its part in support of the war effort by instructing more than 2,500 troops, and an additional 625 troops were in attendance when the armistice was signed on November 11, 1918. It was now time to resume that which had been interrupted by war. However, just two weeks later, disaster struck. In the early evening hours of November 25, 1918, the Main Engineering Building burst into flames. The heroic efforts of students, faculty, staff, and townspeople were to no avail as the fire raged out of control. Fire fighters from State College, joined by companies from Tyrone and Bellefonte in fighting "the most destructive fire in the history of the town and college," prevented it from spreading to College Avenue and other parts of the campus. By the next morning, the entire Main Engineering Building and all the equipment in it was a total loss. Engineering education at Penn State had been dealt a serious blow.

The loss of the Main Engineering Building had a stunning effect on students and faculty alike. The fire had spread so quickly that almost all of the department's records, furnishings, and equipment were destroyed. In addition to the Main Engineering Building, the fire had damaged the college's power plant. College classes were suspended until heat was restored to all the classroom buildings on December 4.

Mechanical Engineering shortly after reconstruction in 1921.

Although the Department of Mechanical Engineering had lost almost everything, it was only the middle of the academic year and classes had to continue. Space in the Mining Building and Unit F, recently made available by the departure of soldiers involved in University wartime training programs, was used by the department to resume classes. In addition, the Pennsylvania Railroad provided space at its test facilities in Altoona in partial support of the railroad studies (the department had sold the 4-4-0 locomotive earlier in the year). To support the department's activities further, a basic mechanical engineering laboratory was constructed in Unit A, with equipment salvaged from the fire.

Edward P. Fessenden and Dean Sackett convinced President Sparks of the need for a new laboratory building for the Department of Mechanical Engineering. Sparks agreed, and with the approval of the trustees, a new building was constructed. It was a 60 foot by 120 foot two-story structure, the design of which was based on a study by E. P. Fessenden of mechanical engineering laboratories. The new structure was located on Burrowes Road opposite the present-day power plant and, though deficient in terms of instructional equipment, was opened for classes in spring 1921. Photos below show the diverse assortment of equipment in the building from approximately 1921 to 1960.

The 1920s were a frustrating period for mechanical engineering education. Qualified students were again being turned away because of the lack of space, and department activities were spread unevenly throughout three buildings. Although the new Mechanical Engineering Laboratory was complete, the Main Engineering Building had not been replaced. Faculty turnover was also a problem. In 1921, E. P. Fessenden left Penn State for Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute for a faculty position of less prestige but with double the salary he had been making at Penn State. He was replaced as department head by A. J. Wood. The appointment proved to be a significant event in the history of the department.

Repair and service shop.
Elliott jey condensor (left)
Struthers-Wells gas engine (right).
First floor Mechanical Engineering Laboratory.
Foos gas engine.
Second floor Mechanical Engineering Laboratory.
8" x 18" Corliss engine.
Unaflow engine and air compressor.