{"id":1871,"date":"2007-01-16T16:35:14","date_gmt":"2007-01-16T21:35:14","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/engineering.jhu.edu\/magazine-archive\/?p=1871"},"modified":"2014-12-16T16:36:57","modified_gmt":"2014-12-16T21:36:57","slug":"powerful-learning-laboratory","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/engineering.jhu.edu\/magazine-archive\/2007\/01\/powerful-learning-laboratory\/","title":{"rendered":"A Powerful Learning Laboratory"},"content":{"rendered":"
\"The<\/a>
The Power House, ca. 1916.<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

Back in the 1910s and 1920s, the Power House on the Homewood campus did more than keep faculty and students warm. It also served as a learning laboratory for budding young engineers.<\/p>\n

Once a freestanding building and the tallest structure on campus, the 92-year-old smoke stack structure (today adjacent to Whitehead Hall) provided enough heat and steam to serve the Homewood campus and generated surplus energy that was sold to the city of Baltimore, according to university archivist James Stimpert.<\/p>\n

\u201cThe Power House wasn\u2019t intended to be an academic building, but it\u2019s perfectly logical that it would have been used that way,\u201d Stimpert says. \u201cWe had a long line of frugal presidents\u2014if you couldn\u2019t justify the necessity of an expenditure, you weren\u2019t going to buy it.\u201d<\/p>\n

Its academic uses fit with John B. Whitehead\u2019s vision that an undergraduate education in engineering should include hands-on experience. In a piece for the Bulletin of the Society for the Promotion of Engineering Education in 1914\u2014the year the Power House was built\u2014Whitehead wrote of a colleague\u2019s survey to assess students\u2019 \u201cfitness for professional work.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cStated briefly,\u201d Whitehead wrote, \u201cthe general conclusion was that the graduate lacks practical experience, has little knowledge of commerce, business methods and economies, and must devote himself in some way to acquiring further information and knowledge of affairs for several years.\u201d<\/p>\n

If it wasn\u2019t the building\u2019s originally intended use, its academic potential was being fully embraced just five years after it was built, according to \u201cMechanical Equipment at Johns Hopkins University,\u201d an article by Julian C. Smallwood published in Power in 1919.<\/p>\n

\u201cNaturally, the power plant is designed primarily with a view to providing economical and continuous service, which, of course, means the installation of modern engines and scientific instruments. But of nearly equal prominence is the purpose to include not only every usual facility for undergraduate experimentation, but also all practicable means for research, usual and special. In fact, it may be said that research is the keynote of the whole equipment.\u201d<\/p>\n

Smallwood\u2019s account includes a description of the machines that made the Power House tick, such as the 50-kilowatt Loco-mobile, also known as the \u201cBuckeyemobile.\u201d There were also four 250-horsepower Babcock & Wilcox boilers for function, as well as equipment that was strictly experimental, like a 15-ton Frick refrigerating machine and a Studebaker auto engine with a fan brake, he notes.<\/p>\n

After a visit to the Power House, an alumnus writing for the January 1915 edition of the alumni magazine posited that the engineering school radiated \u201can atmosphere vibrant with preparation, tense with expectancy and eagerness and hopefulness, a spirit which seemed not only to animate instructors and students, but even in some magical fashion to emanate from the fresh plaster and shining woodwork of the building and its equipment.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Back in the 1910s and 1920s, the Power House on the Homewood campus did more than keep faculty and students warm. It also served as a learning laboratory for budding young engineers. Once a freestanding building and the tallest structure on campus, the 92-year-old smoke stack structure (today adjacent to Whitehead Hall) provided enough heat…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":4,"featured_media":1872,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[75],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1871","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-research-development","issue-winter-2007"],"acf":[],"yoast_head":"\nA Powerful Learning Laboratory - JHU Engineering Magazine<\/title>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"https:\/\/engineering.jhu.edu\/magazine-archive\/2007\/01\/powerful-learning-laboratory\/\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"A Powerful Learning Laboratory - JHU Engineering Magazine\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:description\" content=\"Back in the 1910s and 1920s, the Power House on the Homewood campus did more than keep faculty and students warm. 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