Early College Engineering Labs
- RF Cafe Cool Pic -

Cool Pic Archive Pages

| 1 | 2 | 3 | 4 | 5 | 6 | 7 | 8 | 9 | 10 | 11 | 12 | 13 | 14 | 15 | 16 | 17 | 18 | 19 | 20 | 21 | 22 | 23 | 24 | 25 | 26 | 27 | 28 | 29 | 30 |

These images have been chosen for their uniqueness. Subject matter ranges from historic events, to really cool phenomena in science and engineering, to relevant place, to ingenious contraptions, to interesting products (which now has its own dedicated Featured Product category).

When I think back at the engineering labs from my days in school, I wonder how much things have really changed from then until now. It is hard to believe that freshman and sophomore labs are not still consumed with radial lead resistors, inductors, and capacitors, solderless breadboards, and a variety of light bulbs, motors, transformers, relays, and rheostats. By the time you move into the junior year, labs have gotten a bit more intense with microprocessor controls (mine used an 8088 CPU with machine language programming for the serial port), some high voltage apparati[sic], digital logic circuits (74-series leaded ICs), and a chance to lay out/fabricate/populate a PCB. On-hand test equipment consists of 2nd or 3rd generation oscilloscopes, signal generators, and power supplies.

I did a search for photos of labs from back in the early to mid 1900s to see if much had changed from then until the time I was in college. Here are a few of the pics that I found. If you appear in any of these pictures, you are really old.

Links are provided to all of the original images. All copyrights acknowledged.

Ohio State University Electrical Engineering Lab 1890 - RF Cafe       Queens University Engineering Lab 1940 - RF Cafe

Ohio State University (c. 1890)                             Queens University (c. 1940)

 

Clemson Electrical Engineering Lab 1917 - RF Cafe       Kansas State U. Electrical Engineering Lab 1920 - RF Cafe

Clemson College Engineering (c. 1914)                         Kansas State University (c. 1920)

VMI Engineeing Lab 1924 - RF Cafe       University of Toronto Engineering Lab 1909 - RF Cafe

Virginia Military Institute (c. 1924)                        University of Toronto (c. 1909)

Jim Tillma in electrical engineering laboratory, University of Nebraska, Lincoln 1942 - RF Cafe       Tulane University Pratt Institute 1904 - RF Cafe

University of Nebraska, Lincoln (c.1942)                Tulane University Pratt Institute (c. 1904)

North Carolina State University Engineering Lab 1920 - RF Cafe      University of Michigan Engineering Lab - RF Cafe

North Carolina State University (c. 1920)      University of Michigan (c. 1944)

 

 

Posted August 14, 2020