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It is not the purpose of this article to tell what Minnesota did in football this year, but rather to tell what the engineers did in Minnesota football. By far the most powerful man on the Gopher line this year was Festus (Pat) Tierney. Pat was the only man picked by Coach Eckersall to represent Minnesota on the mythical All-Conference team. This season marked the completion of the third year of varsity football for Fred Enke, a Senior Civil. His great work at center in the Wisconsin game will long be remembered. John Gillian, substituting at right guard, showed himself as a comer this fall and will bear watching next season. Too much credit cannot be given these men for carrying engineering courses and going out for Varsity athletics.
-December 1920
It is an Engineer's business to spend other people's money. At best that is a delicate matter. At worst, it is almost impossible to satisfy many of the dyed-in-the-wool mugwumps that they are getting their money's worth. It is an engineer's business to know what other men need in their business equipment, what corporations need for the conducting of their business, and what towns and cities must have for sanitary and aesthetic reasons. It is one thing to know what is correct, essential, and useful, but it is another to be able to go into a directors' meeting, a session of the town council, or a caucus and sell that thing to the people who are placing the order. Cities as well as small towns all over this part of the world have plenty of monuments to the failure of Engineers to show buyers what was safe and sensible in construction and planning of all kinds.
To judge by the quality of the speeches and discussions staged in recent meetings of the Engineering students, the present generation of Minnesota Engineers is no improvement in this respect. Man after man rises to give voice to opinions which his audience is anxious to hear, but fails to interest them because he drones on and on, repeating himself endlessly, tacking rambling statements together with interminable "and's" and getting nowhere. Daniel Webster said that other only way to learn to be an orator is to make a speech every time anybody is damn fool enough to ask you. Graduate Engineers cannot afford to wait for this trial and error method of learning public speaking. Out of nearly a thousand Engineering students, the number who have elected public speaking this year is twelve. The facts, coupled with the size of the audiences at Engineers meetings, speak for themselves.
-May 1921
The postwar period is an excellent time to consider adopting the metric system. This method of measurement is preferable to the English system for several reasons: it is simple, it saves time, it is useful in foreign trade, and it provides the necessary standardization of units.
The metric system is based on units of ten; proportional increases and decreases in the dollar-meter-liter-gram system can be achieved simply by moving the decimal point to the right or left, reducing the time needed for conversions between units. If the United States and Great Britain, the only two nations in the world currently not using the metric system, would adopt it, no time and effort would have to be expended converting between standards. The confusion created in foreign trade by the existence of multiple systems of measurement could be eliminated by the use of a single standard, the natural choice of which would be the metric system since it is used by virtually every nation.
During wartime, for instance, converting blueprints and specifications from the metric form to the English system caused delays in production. Comparing the systems of Great Britain and the U.S. results in even more difficulties as many fundamental units share the same name but indicate different quantities.
-November 1945
The Society for the Promotion of Engineering Education (SPEE) recommended broadening the engineering curricula to include courses in the natural and social sciences and the humanities. The goal of this modification is to provide engineers with the human relations background necessary for a more active and effective role in public affairs. SPEE recommended that twenty percent of the undergraduate engineering curriculum be devoted to the humanities and science.
Many universities believe that an expanded liberal education requirement can't be accommodated without either reducing the number of required engineering courses or increasing the length of the engineering program to five years. A committee in the Institute of Technology began studying the feasibility of such a five-year program nearly two years ago. On January 22, 1945, the faculty adopted the five-year curriculum and voted that it be required of all freshman students beginning in September of 1946.
-March 1946
The Hybrid Computer Center serving university students and faculty features a connection of two EAI 680 analog computers and one Control Data Corporation 1700 computer. The interface unit is a two-way system for digital-analog and analog-digital relay using Fortran. University students and faculty members conduct research and data analysis at the center, and state agencies and local industries also use equipment there. One project for private industry allows architects to feed a blueprint into the computer, which stores the data. The graphics terminal, a CDC 274 Digigraphics console, serves as the means for communication. The complete magnitude of the center's potential is overwhelming.
-December 1970
In a wave of futuristic thinking, Dr. Don Yardley of the Department of Civil Engineering proposes underground highways for the Twin Cities area. Criticizing current metropolitan planners as having their heads in a hole in the ground, Yardley envisions a system of transit arteries buried beneath the surface. In the area surrounding Minneapolis and St. Paul lies a deposit of St. Peter Sandstone approximately 150 feet thick. Structurally self-supporting tunnels may easily be excavated from this geological formation, and Yardley confidently asserts, "There aren't any problems that we don't have the technology for." Technical feasibility aside, cost considerations and long-range transit needs will ultimately determine the fate of this pipe dream. Dr. Charles Nelson, the Metropolitan Transit Commission's administrative assistant, is optimistic about the possibility of tunnel travel. Underground highways, he claims, will cut construction costs, eliminate weather worries, and reduce visual blight.
January 1971
