State College of Washington School of Mechanical Engineering Records, 1913-1940

Mechanical Engineering courses were offered at Washington State College (WSC) from the school’s beginning in the 1890s. In 1917-1918, the Department of Mechanical and Electrical Engineering was incorporated into the College of Mechanic Arts and Engineering during a WSC reorganization. By the time Professor Howard Langdon became department chair in 1933, the College of Mechanic Arts and Engineering had officially separated. Langdon replaced Professor A.C. Abell as Mechanical Engineering department chair following Abell’s sudden death from paralysis on December 31, 1932. Langdon served as chair until 1944.

Prior to his death, Abell had gathered research and taken notes on designing and operating a new power plant for WSC. Both before and after Abell’s death, Langdon contributed to this research. In late 1933, the Mechanical Engineering Department was placed in charge of designing, writing specifications for, and supervising the installation of a new power plant at WSC, replacing the power plant that had heated the campus for nearly thirty years. Langdon served as the Chief Engineer for the design and construction of the new power plant. Funded by the New Deal’s Works Progress Administration (WPA), the power plant began operating on October 25, 1935 and the WPA contract for the project was deemed officially complete on December 1, 1935.

During this same period, two other New Deal programs assisted the Department of Mechanical Engineering. From 1933-1935, selected students received funding to stay at WSC through the Federal Emergency Relief Administration (FERA). The National Youth Administration (NYA) replaced FERA following the 1935 enactment of the WPA. Like FERA, the NYA provided work-study programs for selected college students throughout the United States, including WSC’s Mechanical Engineering students. Both programs intended to prevent students from dropping out of school and flooding the job market. These federal programs helped the Mechanical Engineering department survive the Depression, providing necessary funding for student tuition, jobs, and campus projects.