Mechanical Oversight Found

It’s a goofy and probably insignificant thing, but we found an error discovered by happenstance (see story, p. 22) regarding the University of Arkansas College of Engineering to be interesting.r

A research oversight prompted 2003 to be declared the centennial year for the school’s Department of Mechanical Engineering, and an anniversary banner has hung this semester in its building window on Dickson Street.r

But last year former UA library researcher Jordan Patty discovered the department’s centennial was actually 1896, or 25 years after the UA was founded.r

Patty dug up an 1890 photo in the Cardinal Yearbook that included mechanical engineering students. He also found records that the Arkansas General Assembly appropriated $7,000 to buy equipment for the ME department in 1889, and the UA later added another $2,500.r

The legislature appropriated $5,000 for an ME department building, and in 1891 the UA’s first bachelor’s degree in mechanical engineering was awarded to Mack Martin. r

A department head hired in 1958 apparently wrote a brief history of the department and noted the same historical problem. But that work was buried until recently.