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CORNELL ALUMNI NEWS
Kimball and Thurston Halls Named for Pioneers—Construction has started for these
$1,736,000 buildings of the College of Engineering, along Cascadilla Creek east of the Old
Armory. Wing at left is the Materials Processing Laboratory, named for Professor Dexter
S. Kimball, Engineering, Emeritus; at right is the Materials Testing Laboratory named for
Robert H. Thurston, early Director of Sibley College. This architects' drawing, from
Shreve, Lamb & Harmon, pictures the buildings from Sage Green.
Name New Engineering Laboratories
For Thurston and Kimball
NEW BUILDINGS for the College of Engineering,
for which excavations are being
dug east of the Old Armory, will be
named Thurston Hall and Kimball
Hall, by action of the University Board
of Trustees.
The Materials Testing Laboratory
will be named for Robert H. Thurston,
inventor and pioneer in engineering education,
who was Director of Sibley
College from 1885 until his death in
1903. Thurston Hall will be built along
the north bank of Cascadilla Creek,
across the path that led from Sage
Green to the former trolley bridge and
College town. It will contain special
equipment and complete facilities for
research and teaching of fundamental
problems in stresses and testing engineering
materials and structures.
A wing at right angle, to the east, will
be named for Professor Dexter S. Kimball,
pioneer in industrial engineering,
who retired fifteen years ago as the first
Dean of the College of Engineering.
This will be the Materials Processing
Laboratory, housing the machine shops
and facilities for teaching and research
of tool design and plant layout and organization,
production techniques, and
May 1, 1951
motion and time studies of operations.
The new buildings are expected to be
completed in the spring of 1953, and
will cost $1,736,000, including equipment.
General contractor is White Construction
Co. of New York City, of
which Robert A. Escher '42 is vice-president.
About $1,000,000 of the cost
comes from gifts made to the Engineering
Development Fund since 1942 by
numerous corporations with alumni officers
and by individual Cornellians.
Plans are being made to obtain the necessary
balance.
Thurston First Teacher
President Andrew D. White brought
Professor Thurston from Stevens Institute
of Technology to head Sibley College
of Mechanical Engineering. At
Stevens, newly opened, Thurston had
developed the first four-year course in
mechanical engineering.
Writing of him in the ALUMNI NEWS
of November 1, 1944, Dean Kimball
said: "But to outline a curriculum was
one thing; to supply subject matter, a
much more difficult undertaking. Modern
textbooks, such as now flood the
market, were not to be had and Thurs-
ton began to develop his own lectures
on strength of materials and the theory
of the steam engine. This, in turn, led
him into experimentation which culminated
in the formation of the first
mechanical laboratory for testing materials
and machines. . . . Out of this work
came new ideas and data as to the properties
of materials, new data on friction
and lubrication. In these fields he invented
new testing machines which
were in advance of anything elsewhere.
. . . He became known as a leader in his
profession, and when the American Society
of Mechanical Engineers was organized
in 1880, he was unanimously
made its first president.
"The effect of Thurston's presence [at
Cornell] was immediate," Kimball continued.
"The University Register of
1885 lists for the first time a course in
'Mechanical Engineering, leading to the
degree of Mechanical Engineer.' And
the outline of the course as listed in the
Register for 1885-86 is in its essence the
prototype of all such courses since, with
their roots in mathematics, physics,
chemistry, drawing, and mechanics and
their application in the later years of the
course. . . . Personally, Dr. Thurston was
a man of kindly and generous impulses.
. . . To his students he was Έobby/ and
his famous course in Thermodynamics
which was required of all Seniors in
Mechanical Engineering was always
known as Έobbyology.' No student ever
went to him for help that came away
without sound advice."
After Thurston's death on his sixtyfourth
birthday, October 25, 1903, a
. • • - ' • "
Director Robert H. Thurston
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