Washington State University Libraries, Manuscripts, Archives and Special Collections
Archives 374
State College of Washington. Department of Mechanical Engineering.
State College of Washington School of Mechanical Engineering Records
1913-1940
4 linear feet of shelf space
4 boxes
This collection contains documents generated by
Washington State College’s (later Washington State University’s) Mechanical
Engineering Department from the 1910s to 1940. The majority of this collection is
about the projects planned and/or undertaken by the Mechanical Engineering
Department during these years. Professors, and eventually department chairs, A.C.
Abell and Howard Langdon gathered or authored much of the research found in this
collection. This collection also includes departmental faculty correspondence as
well as records of various student activities and Depression-era federal funding
requirements and opportunities for Mechanical Engineering students.
Collection materials are inEnglish.
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.
This collection consists primarily of documents such as blueprints, photos, data
diagrams, materials testing lab books, and research papers detailing the research
and projects of WSC’s Mechanical Engineering Department. Most of these projects took
place on WSC’s campus although a few projects were undertaken by the department on
behalf of off-campus entities, including local high schools, hospitals, and
companies. Materials dedicated to the design and installation of the 1930s
WPA-funded campus power plant figure largely in this collection, with research for
the proposed power plant beginning in the 1920s.
Additionally, the collection contains correspondence between WSC Mechanical
Engineering faculty and students needing federal aid in order to continue attending
college during the Great Depression as well as the federal relief project sheets
used to create and track the work-study opportunities provided to selected students.
This collection also includes papers and pre-written dialogue for bi-weekly radio
talks in the 1930s that shared the latest research of Mechanical Engineering faculty
as well as updates on student activities. Other materials provide the minutes,
programs, and activities generated by Mechanical Engineering students and their
faculty sponsors in Sigma Xi, Phi Kappa Phi, the American Society of Mechanical
Engineers, and the Student Activity Committee. There are also materials from the
1937 glider accident during which two Mechanical Engineering students, Cloyd Artman
and Frank See, were killed during a demonstration in front of the WSC Aero Club
(headed by Professor Howard Langdon). Letters, witness testimonies, newspaper
reports, and photos of the crash scene are included among these materials.
This collection also contains a substantial amount of faculty correspondence, largely
generated by Professor Howard Langdon during his tenure as department chair and
covering a variety of topics including his own research, department issues, changes
in curriculum, and student matters.
This collection is arranged in two series.
Series 1 is arranged into two subseries, each arranged alphabetically. Subseries 1.1
consists of materials on WSC’s power plants. Some of this material describes
additions and revisions made during the 1920s to the decades-old power plant, but
most of the material is either research to develop a new power plant or materials
describing the designing and building of the WPA-funded power plant in the
mid-1930s. Subseries 1.2 consists of materials on general research performed by the
Mechanical Engineering Department in WSC’s Machine Shop and Materials Testing
Laboratory.
Series 2 is arranged into two subseries, each arranged alphabetically. Subseries 2.1
contains materials pertaining to Mechanical Engineering faculty, including
correspondence, faculty research reports, and faculty participation in community
clubs such as Pullman’s Kiwanis Club. Subseries 2.2 contains materials pertaining
largely to Mechanical Engineering students. These materials consist primarily of
paperwork from a variety of student clubs, programs, committees, and societies.
This collection is open and available for research use.
Copyright restrictions apply.
[Item Description]
State College of Washington School of Mechanical Engineering Records, 1913-1940 (Archives 374)
Manuscripts, Archives, and Special Collections, Washington State University Libraries, Pullman, WA.
The materials in this collection were transferred to the Washington State University
Libraries’ Manuscripts, Archives, and Special Collections on December 14, 1988 by
the WSU Architecture School and retained as accession UA88-47.
This collection was processed by Laura Briere in August 2017 to January 2018. An
alphabetical order was imposed on the pre-existing, approximate alphabetical order
in both series of this collection.
This collection was separated from other materials in UA 88-47 during processing.
These other records contain materials from Washington State College’s Architectural
Engineering department from the 1920s through the 1950s (Archives 375).
They also contain materials generated by Washington State College’s architect Stanley
Smith through his WSC campus projects and his private practice projects from the
1920s-1940s (Cage 888).
Mechanical Arts and Engineering College Records, 1892-1943 (Archives 156)
Mechanical Engineering Department Records, 1910-1976 (Archives 31).
This collection is indexed under the following headings in the online catalog.
Researchers desiring materials about related topics, persons, or places should
search the catalog using these headings.
State College of Washington. Department of Mechanical Engineering -- History
State College of Washington. Department of Mechanical and Electrical Engineering -- History
State College of Washington. Department of Mechanical and Electrical Engineering
Mechanical engineering -- History
Colleges and Universities
Washington (State)
Series 1: Research Files
Subseries 1.1: Washington State College
Power Plant
1
1
1930s
Blueprint, Forced Draft Unit,
Washington State College
1
2
1930s
Blueprint, Water Tube Boilers,
Washington State College
1
3
1930-1931
Boilers, General, Washington State
College
1
4
1926-1934
Boiler Test Data, Washington State
College Power Plant
1
5
1935
Calculations for Proposed Steam Plant,
Deck Beam Calculations
1
6
1930s
Charts for Flow of Water in Pipes
1
7
1933
Coal Weighing
1
8
1932-1935
Coal Weighing Devices
1
9
1919-1931
Condensers, Heat Transfers
1
10
1913-1928
Condensers, Temperature Notes and
Research
1
11
1930
Heat Exchange Research
(Langdon)
1
12
1927-1937
Heating, Research, Drawings,
Blueprints
1
13
1928
Heating Schedule Data
1
14
1927-1937
Heating, Temperature Data
1
15
1933-1935
Piping, Cost Data, Etc.
1
16
1932-1934
Power Plant, Misc.
1
17
1933-1935
WSC Power Plant Stokers, Westinghouse
Electric & Manufacturing Co. Blueprints, Contracts
1
18
1933-1935
WSC Power Plant Stokers, Westinghouse
Electric & Manufacturing Co. Correspondence,
Contracts
1
19-20
1927-1932
Pulverized Coal Systems,
Correspondence and Data
1
21
1928-1931
Pumps
1
22
1934-1936
Pumps, Data, Blueprints, and
Correspondence
1
23
1931
Refractories, Correspondence and
Research Materials
1
24
1934-1935
Sketches and Blueprints, Boilers and
Auxiliary Equipment, Washington State College
1
25
1927-1931
Steam Delivery Charges
Data
1
26
1928-1931
Steam Distribution Data and Research
Papers (A.C. Abell)
1
27
1930-1931
Steam Distribution Data and Research
Papers (A.C. Abell)
1
28
1930
Steam Load Data
1
29
1929
Steam, Research Book
1
30
Undated
Steam/Turbine Cost, Delivery,
Temperature Data (A.C. Abell)
1
31
1930
Total Electrical Load Data (A.C.
Abell)
1
32
1927-1937
Vacuum Vent Valve Blueprint/Design
1
33
1930
WSC Hydro-Jet System
Blueprints
1
34
1935
Welders' Qualification Records (Power
Plant Equipment)
1
35
1930s
Welders' Test (Power Plant
Equipment
Subseries 1.2: General
Research
1
36
1932
Annual Report, Amalgamated Fuel
Burners Union
1
37
Undated
Auto-Engines' Class Notes (A.C.
Abell)
1
38
Undated
Blueprint, Beam loads, Washington
State College
1
39
1934
Blueprint, First Floor
1
40
1923
Concrete Costs
1
41
1927-1930
Data and Equipment
Correspondence
1
42
1929-1930
Data and Equipment
Correspondence
1
43
1928
Extensometer and Compressometer
(Hydro-Static) WSC Research
1
44
1927
Fan Motors and Drivers,
Gymnasium
1
45
1931
Francis Adams High School, Blueprints,
Consultation, and Sketches
1
46
Undated
Franklin Grade School Heating
Calculations, Pullman, WA
1
47
1930-1932
Fuel, Correspondence and
Research
1
48
1931
Fuel, Correspondence and
Research
1
49
1925
Heating Costs, Commons Building; Troy
Hall
1
50
1914-1920
Heating, Morrill Hall
Blueprints
1
51
1932-1938
Heating Plant Research (Langdon;
Mechanical Engineering Dept.)
2
1
1937-1938
Heating Research
2
2
Undated
Heating and Ventilation
2
3
Undated
High Temp. Testing of Metals,
Blueprints
2
4
1921
Infiltration of Air in Buildings,
Misc.
2
5
1933
Laboratory Observations
2
6
1930-1931
Materials Testing
Correspondence
2
7
1929-1932
Materials Testing
Correspondence
2
8
1934-1936
Materials Testing Field Data, Public
Works Administration
2
9
1934-1938
Materials Testing Field Data, Public
Works Administration
2
10
1936-1938
Materials Testing Field Data, Public
Works Administration
2
11
1931-1934
Materials Testing Lab Book, Alloy and
Mild Steels
2
12
1927-1928
Materials Testing Lab Book,
Concrete
2
13-14
1928-1929
Materials Testing Lab Book,
Concrete
3
1
1928-1929
Materials Testing Lab Book,
Concrete
3
2
1929-1932
Materials Testing Lab Book,
Concrete
3
3
1930-1932
Materials Testing Lab Book,
Concrete
3
4
1929-1930
Materials Testing Laboratory Data,
Concrete Compression
3
5
1927-1928
Measuring Device, WSC
Research
3
6
1925-1932
Refrigeration and Insulation Data,
WSC
3
7
1934
State Hospital, Medical
Lake
3
8
1908
Steam Laboratory
Observations
3
9-10
1930-1938
Stoker Research (Roslyn Cascade Coal
Co.)
3
11
1912-1921
Temperature and Wind Velocities,
Pullman, WA
3
12
1931
Testing Research
3
13
1927-1935
Unfinished Projects, Washington State
College
3
14
Undated
Weather Conditions over a Ten Year
Period, Pullman, WA
Series 2: Administrative materials
Subseries 2.1: Mechanical Engineering
faculty
3
15
1932-1936
Correspondence, Catalog Changes,
Sample Testing
3
16
1935-1936
Kiwanis Correspondence
3
17
1938
Kiwanis Correspondence
3
18
1934-1935
Letters, General
3
19
1934-1939
Library and Staff
Correspondence
3
20
1937-1938
Staff Letters
3
21
1940
General Correspondence
3
22
1935
Curriculum Changes
3
23
1935
Faculty Research Report
Subseries 2.2: Mechanical Engineering
students
3
24-25
1937
American Society of Mechanical
Engineering, 5th Annual Pacific Northwest Student
Conference
3
26
1940
ASME Contact and Membership
Correspondence
4
1
1940
ASME Correspondence
(General)
4
2
1940
ASME Luncheon and Dinner
4
3
1940
ASME Program Material and Address
List
4
4
1933-1934
Civil Works Administration (CWA)
Student Employment
4
5
1937
Glider Accident, Cloyd Artman and
Frank See
4
6
1934
Federal Emergency Relief
Administration (FERA)
4
7
1935
Federal Emergency Relief
Administration (FERA) and the National Youth Administration
(NYA)
4
8
1936-1937
National Youth
Administration
4
9
1937-1939
National Youth
Administration
4
10-11
1936-1939
Prospective Students (Dept. of Mech.
Eng.)
4
12-14
1936-1937
Radio Talks, Department of Mechanical
Engineering
4
15
1938
Senior Inspection Trip
4
16
1936-1938
Sigma Xi Correspondence
4
17
1929-1938
Sigma Xi and Phi Kappa Phi
4
18-19
1936-1938
Student Activities
Committee