Stevens Institute of Technology’s history of innovation and research began with its founding family of inventors. Colonel John Stevens III, after graduating from King’s College in New York City in 1768, purchased and began to develop a plot of land that now comprises present-day Hoboken. He had an idea that steamboat ferries could connect the farmlands of New Jersey to lower Manhattan. Colonel Stevens built a steamboat that carried both passengers and goods, and he eventually became the first in history to operate a steamship in the open ocean on his trek to Philadelphia (sailing around South Jersey and up the Delaware River).
Colonel Stevens and his sons, Robert and Edwin, then began testing a new ship, which would become the first commercial steam ferry in the world. Robert employed a successful ferry design, and a fleet of new ferries was crossing the Hudson several times a day.
After succeeding in commercial ferry design, Colonel Stevens and his sons wanted to be the first to establish a commercially-successful railroad. Together, they engineered and built a prototype locomotive in 1826 on what is today the Stevens Institute of Technology campus. After a successful test of the first American-built locomotive, the family constructed a rail line from Perth Amboy to Trenton, New Jersey, where passengers could transfer to the steamboat ferry and head down the Delaware River to Philadelphia. Starting from Manhattan, the entire trip took only 10 to 11 hours, which cut several days off the previous journey by horse.
Robert Stevens then came up with an idea to improve existing tracks by inventing the T-rail, which is now the most common form of railroad tracks used worldwide. Robert also invented the hook-headed spike for securing the rails of a railroad to their rectangular foundations.
When Edwin Stevens passed away in 1868, he left a large piece of land, construction funds, an endowment, and instructions to trustees to create a new institution for higher education. Edwin A. Stevens Hall was built, and President Henry Morton created a curriculum integrating technical education in engineering and the humanities. Opening in 1870, Stevens became the first institution in the U.S. to offer a degree in mechanical engineering.
Exactly 40 years later, in the 1910s, Stevens graduate Henry Gantt invented the Gantt chart, a type of bar chart that presents a project schedule. Gantt designed this chart so that supervisors could know whether production was on schedule, ahead of schedule, or behind schedule.
Perhaps one of the most notable inventions to emerge from Stevens is the hanging art form known as the mobile, which was created by Stevens graduate and mechanical engineer Alexander Calder in 1932. Several years after graduating, Calder began to make mechanical toys in 1926. In 1930, after visiting abstract artist Piet Mondrian‘s studio, Calder became interested in abstract sculpture. He began designing kinetic sculptures that were manipulated by cranks and motors. At the time, Calder’s sculptures were different than the traditional sense of art in that instead of being static, the artwork was meant to move. In 1931, artist Marcel Duchamp named Calder’s sculptures “mobiles,” a French pun meaning both “motion” and “motive.” Calder, however, found that the sculptures’ motorization became boringly repetitive. In 1932, he solved this problem by hanging sculptures that moved with air currents. The mobiles had abstract shapes that were balanced on sensitive, pivoting rods that moved with the air, allowing for a more natural movement of the forms.
Bubble wrap, an amusing yet useful form of packaging, was created by Stevens graduate Alfred W. Fielding in the late 1950s. With the help of Swiss inventor Marc Chavannes, Fielding sealed two shower curtains together, in turn creating several air bubbles between the two sheets. While Fielding’s wife Virginia helped to prepare sheets of the wrap for testing, Fielding’s son Howard played with and popped the bubbles, delighted with the new invention. While the two inventors knew they were onto something, they at first struggled to find a definitive purpose for bubble wrap. Their first thought was to advertise it as a three-dimensional wallpaper, and then thought about making it a form of insulation. Finally, Chavannes thought of its ultimate use: packaging. With IBM just about to begin inventing and delivering their first personal computer, Fielding and Chavannes’ invention would provide the perfect package deal.
In 1956, Stevens graduate Frederick Reines discovered the neutrino, ratifying the “Big Bang” theory of the universe’s creation. Neutrinos are subatomic particles produced in nuclear fusion processes, radioactive decay, and nuclear reactors. First proposed as a hypothetical particle in 1930, neutrinos were needed to defend the law of conservation of energy. In 1934, physicists concluded that while neutrinos could pass through Earth, there was no possible way to observe them. Reines and his colleague Clyde Cowan, however, found a way. Accepted into the Massachusetts Institute of Technology but choosing instead to attend Stevens, Reines earned a Bachelor of Science in Mechanical Engineering in 1939, and then a Master of Science in Mathematical Physics in 1941. In 1944, Reines joined the Manhattan Project’s Los Alamos Laboratory. Reines and Cowan developed equipment and procedures to detect neutrinos for the first time in 1956. Reines then dedicated his career to study the neutrino’s properties, and was awarded the 1995 Nobel Prize in Physics for his co-detection of the particle.
In 1971, Stevens opened its doors to women for the first time, adding even more great minds and researchers to the university. In 1982, Stevens became the first major U.S. educational institution to require students to purchase and use personal computers in class. Stevens also developed one of the nation’s first intranets: a private network that is used to securely share company information and computing resources among employees.
In 1985, Stevens alumn Mark Crispin invented IMAP, one of the most commonly-used email protocols for retrieving emails. Crispin earned a B.S. in Technology and Society from Stevens in 1977. Used by tens of millions of people daily, Crispin invented IMAP as a more advanced email protocol that allowed access to more than one Inbox folder on the server, while offering more functionality in manipulating messages than the preexisting POP protocol.
With research and invention having deep roots within Stevens’ founding and overall growth as an institution, our university’s innovation continues to move forward in today’s ever-changing technological world. Stevens’ students and faculty are constantly conducting research, creating new technologies, and solving critical problems across disciplines.
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