Department of Mechanical Engineering
1886-1900
The first instructor in Mechanical Engineering was Mr. George Armington, who taught the fundamentals of mechanical engineering from 1887 to 1889. The Mechanical Engineering Department was located in the south end of the basement of Case Main. The total equipment in 1889 consisted of three lathes, a band saw, and one set of small tools in the pattern shop and two lathes, a shaper, an upright drill and an emery grinder in the machine shop.In 1889, there were four students enrolled in Mechanical Engineering and the number continued to increase to twelve in 1892, and sixty in 1900.In 1889, Staley hired Charles Benjamin as department chair for mechanical engineering. As the chair of the new department, Benjamin created the curriculum, supervised building plans for the new mechanical engineering laboratory, and acquired the necessary laboratory equipment.
The Mechanical Engineering Laboratory design effort started as the “Senior Thesis” of Comfort A. Adams (1890) and was opened in 1892. Most of the space in the Mechanical Engineering Laboratory were dedicated to teaching mechanical manufacturing. The building was located at the south end of the campus and included a wing to be used for the Metallurgy Department.
The Mechanical Engineering Laboratory was occupied by at least two drawing rooms, several machine shops, and a metals processing lab (Forming and forging) and included a central heating plant and an attached assaying room. Benjamin constructed a testing lab in the basement. Also included in the building were several machines for determining material properties, testing steam engines and generating electricity.
By 1894 there were three staff members in the department. The testing laboratory equipment had been considerably increased to include a 50-hp Corliss engine, a 20hp Porter-Allen high-speed engine, a Deana steam pump, a 10-hp Webber transmitting dynamometer, a belt testing machine, a Prony brake, a 60,000-lb testing machine, a 50 hp boiler with mechanical stoker, a surface condenser, and indicators, gauges, barometers, etc.
The laboratory was shared by Mechanical Engineering and Mining Engineering Departments until 1905, and then it was used by the Mechanical Engineering Department only until 1927.
Faculty in the Mechanical Engineering department were publishing on the strength of malleable and steel castings, the effect of punching on steel plates, the tensile strength of belting, the transverse strength of different mixtures of cast-iron.