Higher education postcard: Purdue University

Greetings from Indiana!

In 1862 the United States passed the first of a series of laws – known as the Morrill Land-Grant Acts – which allowed states to sell federally owned land to fund the creation of colleges. These colleges – known now as land-grant universities – form a large chunk of the US higher education system. And its important to note – as America tries to forget its history – that the land sold to fund them was often bought, granted by or stolen from Native American tribes.

The state of Indiana decided in 1865 to take advantage of the act, and a process to decide where and how to spend the money began. The state could have chosen a couple of existing institutions, but in 1869 was swayed by proposals from Tippecanoe County which included pledges of $200,000 (about worth $4.6 million today) and 100 acres of land. And so Purdue University, named after the benefactor who had pledged the lion’s share of the $200,000, was established in West Lafayette, on the Wabash River.

Purdue developed into a university focusing on engineering and agricultural subjects. This was under the guidance of Emerson E White, president of Purdue from 1876 to 1883. He sought to differentiate Purdue from the “classical” American universities, and the syllabus reflected this. Humanities and social sciences were not prohibited, but were not prioritised. He sought also to ban fraternities from campus, and when the Indiana state legislature required the university to allow fraternities, he resigned. But it was too late, and that year Purdue received no state grant.

Purdue became a leading institution for research into steam traction on the railways. By the 1890s it owned several locomotives, and a railway dynamometer which enabled research. There was a local railroad – the Monon railroad – which operated works near Purdue. In 1891 the Purdue football team (gridiron, not association or union or league) beat neighbours Wabash College 44–0; there were suggestions that the team had included some ringers – boilermakers from the Monon works. Which led to the nickname Boilermakers, given to the university’s sports teams.

(Its a bit of a tradition in American universities for their teams to have nicknames; a little like the now sometimes quaint nicknames used for football teams in Britain. A few still have local meaning, but other than journalists looking for copy, do many people still call their team by its nickname? Answers in the chat, please. But in America they are still used, it seems.)

Purdue became the first US university to have its own airport, in 1934, and introduce credit bearing courses in learning to fly. Amelia Earhart was an instructor for those courses, and a career counsellor for women students. Her round-the-world flight attempt in 1937, in which she disappeared, used an aeroplane funded by Purdue’s research foundation.

Purdue scientists discovered properties of the element germanium which enabled the invention of transistors. Transistors were fundamental to the development of electronics and computing. Transistors themselves were invented at Bell Laboratories but without germanium semiconducting crystals, which the Purdue team produced, transistors would not have operated quickly enough.

In 2017 Purdue University bought Kaplan, the early online university, and transformed it into Purdue University Global.

The card – here’s a jigsaw – shows the Boilermaker Special, Purdue’s official mascot. The Boilermaker was introduced in 1940, paid for by alumni and members of the Purdue Reamer Club, a student club formed as an alternative to the fraternity societies. The first vehicle comprised a body made by the Baldwin Locomotive Works, mounted on a Studebaker chassis. The card shows the third Boilermaker Special, which was in service from 1960 to 1993. It was made by General Motors, on a bus chassis. The current Boilermaker Special is the eighth; a ninth is expected to be in service from this summer.

The card was posted in February 1973 to a couple in Washington DC: