1906 San Francisco earthquake
The 1906 San Francisco earthquake struck the coast of Northern California at 5:12 a.m. on Wednesday, April 18 with an estimated moment magnitude of 7.9 and a maximum Mercalli intensity of XI. High intensity shaking was felt from Eureka on the North Coast to the Salinas Valley, an agricultural region to the south of the San Francisco Bay Area. Devastating fires soon lasted for several days. Thousands of homes were dismantled; as a result, up to 3,000 people died and over 80% of the city of San Francisco was destroyed. The events are remembered as one of the worst and deadliest earthquakes in the history of the United States; the death toll remains the greatest loss of life from a natural disaster in California's history and high in the lists of American disasters. The San Andreas Fault is a continental transform fault that forms part of the tectonic boundary between the Pacific Plate and the North American Plate; the strike-slip fault is characterized by lateral motion in a dextral sense, where the western plate moves northward relative to the eastern plate.
This fault runs the length of California from the Salton Sea in the south to Cape Mendocino in the north, a distance of about 810 miles. The maximum observed; the 1906 earthquake preceded the development of the Richter magnitude scale by three decades. The most accepted estimate for the magnitude of the quake on the modern moment magnitude scale is 7.9. According to findings published in the Journal of Geophysical Research, severe deformations in the earth's crust took place both before and after the earthquake's impact. Accumulated strain on the faults in the system was relieved during the earthquake, the supposed cause of the damage along the 450-kilometer-long segment of the San Andreas plate boundary; the 1906 rupture propagated both southward for a total of 296 miles. Shaking was felt from Oregon to Los Angeles, inland as far as central Nevada. A strong foreshock preceded the main shock by about 20 to 25 seconds; the strong shaking of the main shock lasted about 42 seconds. There were decades of minor earthquakes – more than at any other time in the historical record for northern California – before the 1906 quake.
Interpreted as precursory activity to the 1906 earthquake, they have been found to have a strong seasonal pattern and have been postulated to be due to large seasonal sediment loads in coastal bays that overlie faults as a result of the erosion caused by hydraulic mining in the years of the California Gold Rush. For years, the epicenter of the quake was assumed to be near the town of Olema, in the Point Reyes area of Marin County, because of evidence of the degree of local earth displacement. In the 1960s, a seismologist at UC Berkeley proposed that the epicenter was more offshore of San Francisco, to the northwest of the Golden Gate; the most recent analyses support an offshore location for the epicenter, although significant uncertainty remains. An offshore epicenter is supported by the occurrence of a local tsunami recorded by a tide gauge at the San Francisco Presidio. Analysis of triangulation data before and after the earthquake suggest that the rupture along the San Andreas Fault was about 500 km in length, in agreement with observed intensity data.
The available seismological data support a shorter rupture length, but these observations can be reconciled by allowing propagation at speeds above the S-wave velocity. Supershear propagation has now been recognized for many earthquakes associated with strike-slip faulting. Using old photographs and eyewitness accounts, researchers were able to estimate the location of hypocenter of the earthquake as offshore from San Francisco or near the city of San Juan Bautista, confirming previous estimates. At the time, 375 deaths were reported; the total number of deaths is still uncertain, but various reports presented a range of 700–3,000+. Most of the deaths occurred in San Francisco itself, but 189 were reported elsewhere in the Bay Area. In Monterey County, the earthquake permanently shifted the course of the Salinas River near its mouth. Where the river emptied into Monterey Bay between Moss Landing and Watsonville, it was diverted 6 miles south to a new channel just north of Marina. Between 227,000 and 300,000 people were left homeless out of a population of about 410,000.
Newspapers described Golden Gate Park, the Presidio, the Panhandle and the beaches between Ingleside and North Beach as covered with makeshift tents. More than two years many of these refugee camps were still in operation; the earthquake and fire left long-standing and significant pressures on the development of California. At the time of the disaster, San Francisco had been the ninth-largest city in the United States and the largest on the West Coast, with a population of about 410,000. Over a period of 60 years, the city had become the financial and cultural center of the West. S. economic and military power was projected into the Asia. Over 80 % of the city was destroyed by the fire. Though San Francisco rebuilt the disaster diverted trade and populati
Otto Lilienthal
Karl Wilhelm Otto Lilienthal was a German pioneer of aviation who became known as the "flying man". He was the first person to make well-documented, successful flights with gliders. Newspapers and magazines published photographs of Lilienthal gliding, favorably influencing public and scientific opinion about the possibility of flying machines becoming practical. On 9 August 1896, his glider stalled and he was unable to regain control. Falling from about 15 m, he broke his neck and died the next day, 10 August 1896. Lilienthal was born on 23 May 1848 in German kingdom of Prussia. According to his baptism certificate, his parents were Caroline née Pohle, they belonged to the St. Nikolai evangelical church community in Anklam, where he attended grammar school, where he studied the flight of birds with his brother Gustav. Fascinated by the idea of manned flight and his brother made strap-on wings, but failed in their attempts to fly, he attended the regional technical school in Potsdam for two years and trained at the Schwarzkopf Company before becoming a professional design engineer.
He would attend the Royal Technical Academy in Berlin. In 1867, Lilienthal began experiments on the force of air in earnest, interrupted when he served in the Franco-Prussian War; as a staff engineer in various engineering companies, Lilienthal received his first patent for a mining machine. Five years he founded his own company to make boilers and steam engines. Lilienthal published his famous book Birdflight as the Basis of Aviation in 1889. Lilienthal was born to middle-class parents, they had eight children, but only three of them survived infancy: Otto and Marie. The brothers worked together all their lives on technical and cultural projects. On 6 June 1878, Lilienthal married daughter of a deputy. Music brought them together. After marriage, they took up residence in Berlin and had four children: Otto, Anna and Frida. Lilienthal's greatest contribution was in the development of heavier-than-air flight, he made his flights from an artificial hill he built near Berlin and from natural hills in the Rhinow region.
The filing of a U. S. Patent in 1894 by Lilienthal directed pilots to grip the "bar" for carrying and flying the hang glider; the A-frame of Percy Pilcher and Lilienthal echoes in today's control frame for hang gliders and ultralight aircraft. Working in conjunction with his brother Gustav, Lilienthal made over 2,000 flights in gliders of his design starting in 1891 with his first glider version, the Derwitzer, until his death in a gliding crash in 1896, his total flying time was five hours. At the beginning, in 1891, Lilienthal succeeded with jumps and flights covering a distance of about 25 metres, he could use the updraft of a 10 m/s wind against a hill to remain stationary with respect to the ground, shouting to a photographer on the ground to manoeuvre into the best position for a photo. In 1893, in the Rhinow Hills, he was able to achieve flight distances as long as 250 metres; this record remained unbeaten for anyone else at the time of his death. Lilienthal did research in describing the flight of birds storks, used polar diagrams for describing the aerodynamics of their wings.
He made many experiments in an attempt to gather reliable aeronautical data. During his short flying career, Lilienthal developed a dozen models of monoplanes, wing flapping aircraft and two biplanes, his gliders were designed to distribute weight as evenly as possible to ensure a stable flight. Lilienthal controlled them by changing the center of gravity by shifting his body, much like modern hang gliders; however they were difficult to maneuvre and had a tendency to pitch down, from which it was difficult to recover. One reason for this was that he held the glider by his shoulders, rather than hanging from it like a modern hang glider. Only his legs and lower body could be moved, which limited the amount of weight shift he could achieve. Lilienthal made many attempts to improve stability with varying degrees of success; these included making a biplane which halved the wing span for a given wing area, by having a hinged tailplane that could move upwards to make the flare at the end of a flight easier.
He speculated that flapping wings of birds might be necessary and had begun work on such a powered aircraft. While his lifelong pursuit was flight, Lilienthal was an inventor and devised a small engine that worked on a system of tubular boilers, his engine was much safer than the other small engines of the time. This invention gave him the financial freedom to focus on aviation, his brother Gustav was living in Australia at the time, Lilienthal did not engage in aviation experiments until his brother's return in 1885. There are 25 known Lilienthal patents. Lilienthal performed his first gliding attempts in mid-1891 at the so-called "Windmühlenberg" near to the villages of Krielow and Derwitz which are located west of Potsdam. In 1892, Lilienthal's training area was a hill formation called "Maihöhe" in Steglitz, near Berlin, he built a 4 metres high shed, on top of it. This way, he obtained a "jumping off" place 10 metres high; the shed served for storing his apparatus. In 1893, Lilienthal started to perform gliding attempts in the "Rhinower Berge", at the "Hauptmannsberg" near to Rhinow and 1896, at the "Gollenberg" near to Stölln.
In 1894, Lilienthal built an artificial conical hill near his home in Lichterfelde, called Fliegeberg. It allowed him to launch his
George von Lengerke Meyer
George von Lengerke Meyer was a Massachusetts businessman and politician who served in the Massachusetts House of Representatives, as United States ambassador to Italy and Russia, as United States Postmaster General from 1907 to 1909 during the administration of President Theodore Roosevelt and United States Secretary of the Navy from 1909 to 1913 during the administration of President William Howard Taft. Meyer was a native of Boston, reared in a patrician society, his paternal grandfather, George Augustus Meyer, had emigrated from Germany to New York City. Meyer graduated from Harvard in 1879, for twenty years was in business as a merchant and trustee. In 1885, he married Marian Alice Appleton, he was a director of various trust companies, manufacturing companies, public utilities concerns. While managing his business affairs, he held positions in state and local government, his public service beginning in 1889 with the Boston Common Council, he served on the Board of Aldermen. He joined the Massachusetts Legislature, where for some time he served as speaker of the house.
In 1898 he was appointed by Governor Wolcott as chairman of the Massachusetts Paris Exposition managers. He was a conservative Republican, in 1899 was appointed a national committeeman. Republican Presidents William McKinley and Theodore Roosevelt appointed Meyer to ambassadorships in Italy and Russia, his patrician roots facilitated his interactions with the nobility of Europe in control of the continent. Roosevelt used him to deliver messages to Kaiser Wilhelm II in preference to the official ambassador, Charlemagne Tower; as ambassador to Russia, he presented Roosevelt's proposals with regard to the Russo-Japanese War directly to the Czar. Meyer served as Roosevelt's Postmaster General, from 1907–1909, where he directed the introduction of the first stamp vending machines of the country and the first coil stamps. Upon taking office in March 1909, President Taft appointed Meyer to the position of Secretary of the Navy, a post which Meyer held throughout Taft's term. During this period, the Navy made its first experiments with aviation, although Meyer opposed the project.
In separate tests in 1910 and 1911, civilian pilot Eugene Ely proved the feasibility of carrier-based aviation, by taking off from and landing on a Navy warship. An interesting footnote in the saga of the sinking of the RMS Titanic is that Meyer was awakened, against strict orders, by his personal valet, James Eli Kendall. For his actions, Kendall was fired, apologized to, rehired by Meyer. After 1911, Meyer was an overseer of Harvard University, he retired from national politics and returned to Massachusetts after Taft left office in 1913. He joined the effort to reelect Theodore Roosevelt in 1916; the foremost critic of Woodrow Wilson's naval policies, on the outbreak of World War I he urged preparedness and criticised America's naval administration. He was associated with the National Security League and the Navy League. Among the organizations for which he was a director were the Amoskeag Manufacturing Co. Old Colony Trust Co. Puget Sound Light & Power Co. Walter Baker Co. and Ames Plow Co. In December 1916 Meyer and other philanthropists including Scottish-born industrialist John C.
Moffat, William A. Chanler, Joseph Choate, Clarence Mackay, John Grier Hibben, Nicholas Murray Butler purchased the Château de Chavaniac, birthplace of the Marquis de Lafayette in Auvergne to serve as a headquarters for the French Heroes Lafayette Memorial Fund, managed by Chanler's ex-wife Beatrice Ashley Chanler, he died in Boston on March 9, 1918. The Navy destroyer USS Meyer, named in his honor, was commissioned December 17, 1919 and was in service until May 15, 1929. George von Lengerke Meyer was a brother in the Delta Kappa Epsilon fraternity. M. A. DeWolfe Howe. George von Lengerke Meyer: his life and public services. New York: Dodd, Mead and Co. Boston Transcript, March 11, 1918 Wayne A. Wiegand. Patrician in the Progressive Era: A Biography of George von Lengerke Meyer. Who's who in State Politics, 1912 Practical Politics p. 9. "George von Lengerke Meyer". Find a Grave. Retrieved 2009-05-20
United States Secretary of the Navy
The Secretary of the Navy is a statutory officer and the head of the Department of the Navy, a military department within the Department of Defense of the United States of America. The Secretary of the Navy must be a civilian by law, at least 5 years removed from active military service; the Secretary is appointed by the President and requires confirmation by a majority vote of the Senate. The Secretary of the Navy was, from its creation in 1798, a member of the President's Cabinet until 1949, when the Secretary of the Navy was by amendments to the National Security Act of 1947 made subordinate to the Secretary of Defense; the Department of the Navy consists of two Uniformed Services: the United States Navy and the United States Marine Corps. The Secretary of the Navy is responsible for, has statutory authority to "conduct all the affairs of the Department of the Navy", i.e. as its chief executive officer, subject to the limits of the law, the directions of the President and the Secretary of Defense.
In effect, all authority within the Navy and Marine Corps, unless exempted by law, is derivative of the authority vested in the Secretary of the Navy. Enumerated responsibilities of the SECNAV in the before-mentioned section are: recruiting, supplying, training and demobilizing; the Secretary oversees the construction and repair of naval ships and facilities. SECNAV is responsible for the formulation and implementation of policies and programs that are consistent with the national security policies and objectives established by the President or the Secretary of Defense; the Secretary of the Navy is a member of the Defense Acquisition Board, chaired by the Under Secretary of Defense for Acquisition and Logistics. Furthermore, the Secretary has several statutory responsibilities under the Uniform Code of Military Justice with respect to the administration of the military justice system for the Navy & the Marine Corps, including the authority to convene general courts-martial and to commute sentences.
The principal military advisers to the SECNAV are the two service chiefs of the naval services: for matters regarding the Navy the Chief of Naval Operations, for matters regarding the Marine Corps the Commandant of the Marine Corps. The CNO and the Commandant act as the principal executive agents of the SECNAV within their respective services to implement the orders of the Secretary; the United States Navy Regulations is the principal regulatory document of the Department of the Navy, any changes to it can only be approved by the Secretary of the Navy. Whenever the United States Coast Guard operates as a service within the Department of the Navy, the Secretary of the Navy has the same powers and duties with respect to the Coast Guard as the Secretary of Homeland Security when the Coast Guard is not operating as a service in the Department of the Navy; the Office of the Secretary of the Navy known within DoD as the Navy Secretariat or just as the Secretariat in a DoN setting, is the immediate headquarters staff that supports the Secretary in discharging his duties.
The principal officials of the Secretariat include the Under Secretary of the Navy, the Assistant Secretaries of the Navy, the General Counsel of the Department of the Navy, the Judge Advocate General of the Navy, the Naval Inspector General, the Chief of Legislative Affairs, the Chief of Naval Research. The Office of the Secretary of the Navy has sole responsibility within the Department of the Navy for acquisition, auditing and information management, legislative affairs, public affairs and development; the Chief of Naval Operations and the Commandant of the Marine Corps have their own separate staffs, the Office of the Chief of Naval Operations and Headquarters Marine Corps. Military awards of the United States Department of the Navy Secretary of the Navy Council of Review Boards Stephen Mallory, the only Secretary of the Navy of the Confederate States of America Official website
Thomas Selfridge
Thomas Etholen Selfridge was a first lieutenant in the U. S. Army and the first person to die in an airplane crash, he was the first Active Duty member of the U. S. military to die in a crash while on duty. He was killed while seated as a passenger in the Wright Flyer, on a demonstration flight piloted by Orville Wright. Selfridge was born on February 1882, in San Francisco, California, he was the grandson of Rear Admiral Thomas Oliver Selfridge Sr. He graduated from the United States Military Academy in 1903 and received his commission in the Artillery Corps, he was 31st in a class of 96. In 1907, when the Artillery Corps was separated into the Field Artillery and Coast Artillery Corps, Selfridge was assigned to the 5th Field Artillery Regiment and the following year to the 1st Field Artillery Regiment. Selfridge was stationed at the Presidio during the great San Francisco earthquake of April 18, 1906, his unit participated in rescue as well as cleanup operations. In 1907, he was assigned to the Aeronautical Division, U.
S. Signal Corps at Fort Myer, where he was instructed in flying a dirigible, he was the United States government representative to the Aerial Experiment Association, chaired by Alexander Graham Bell, he became its first secretary. Selfridge took his first flight on December 6, 1907, on Bell's tetrahedral kite, the Cygnet, made of 3,393 winged cells, it took him 168 feet in the air above Bras d'Or Lake in Nova Scotia and flew for seven minutes. This was the first recorded passenger flight of any heavier-than-air craft in Canada, he flew a craft built by a Canadian engineer, Frederick W. Baldwin, which flew three feet off the ground for a distance of about 100 feet. Selfridge designed the Aerial Experiment Association's first powered aircraft. On March 12, 1908, the Red Wing, piloted by Frederick W. Baldwin, raced over the frozen surface of Keuka Lake near Hammondsport, New York, on runners and managed to fly 318 feet, 11 inches, before crashing. Red Wing was destroyed in a crash on its second flight on March 17, 1908, only the engine could be salvaged.
On May 19, 1908, Selfridge became the first US military officer to pilot a modern aircraft when he flew solo in AEA's newest craft, White Wing, traveling 100 feet on his first attempt and 200 feet on his second. Between May 19 and August 3, he made several flights at Hammondsport, culminating in a flight of one minute and thirty seconds at a height of 75 feet; the next day his final solo flight of fifty seconds covered a distance of 800 yards. Although not trained as a pilot, Selfridge was the first U. S. military officer to fly any airplane unaccompanied. In August 1908, Selfridge was one of three pilots trained to fly the Army Dirigible Number One, purchased by the US Army from Thomas Scott Baldwin in July 1908; the dirigible was scheduled to fly from Fort Omaha, Nebraska, to exhibitions at the Missouri State Fair in Sedalia, piloted by Foulois and Selfridge. However, the Army had tentatively agreed to purchase an airplane from the Wright Brothers and had scheduled the acceptance trials in September.
Selfridge, with an interest in both heavier-than-air and lighter-than-air ships, obtained an appointment and traveled to Fort Myer, Virginia. In September 1908, Orville Wright visited Fort Myer to demonstrate the 1908 Wright Military Flyer for the US Army Signal Corps division. On September 17, Selfridge arranged to be his passenger and Wright piloted the craft. On this occasion, the Flyer was carrying more weight than it had done before; the Flyer circled Fort Myer 4½ times at a height of 150 feet. Halfway through the fifth circuit, at 5:14 in the afternoon, the right-hand propeller broke, losing thrust; this set up a vibration, causing the split propeller to hit a guy wire bracing the rear vertical rudder. The wire shattered the propeller. Wright shut off the engine and managed to glide to about 75 feet, but the craft hit the ground nose first. Both men were thrown forward against the remaining wires and Selfridge struck one of the wooden uprights of the framework, fracturing the base of his skull.
He underwent neurosurgery but died three hours without regaining consciousness. Wright suffered severe injuries, including a broken left thigh, several broken ribs, a damaged hip, was hospitalized for seven weeks. Orville Wright described the fatal accident in a letter to his brother, Wilbur Wright: On the fourth round, everything working much better and smoother than any former flight, I started on a larger circuit with less abrupt turns, it was on the first slow turn that the trouble began.... A hurried glance behind revealed nothing wrong, but I decided to shut off the power and descend as soon as the machine could be faced in a direction where a landing could be made; this decision was hardly reached, in fact, I suppose it was not over two or three seconds from the time the first taps were heard, until two big thumps, which gave the machine a terrible shaking, showed that something had broken.... The machine turned to the right and I shut off the power. Quick as a flash, the machine started straight for the ground.
Our course for 50 feet was within a few degrees of the perpendicular. Lt. Selfridge up to this time had not uttered a word, though he took a hasty glance behind when the propeller broke and turned once or twice to look into my face, evidently to see what I thought of the situation, but when the machine turned head
Biplane
A biplane is a fixed-wing aircraft with two main wings stacked one above the other. The first powered, controlled aeroplane to fly, the Wright Flyer, used a biplane wing arrangement, as did many aircraft in the early years of aviation. While a biplane wing structure has a structural advantage over a monoplane, it produces more drag than a similar unbraced or cantilever monoplane wing. Improved structural techniques, better materials and the quest for greater speed made the biplane configuration obsolete for most purposes by the late 1930s. Biplanes offer several advantages over conventional cantilever monoplane designs: they permit lighter wing structures, low wing loading and smaller span for a given wing area. However, interference between the airflow over each wing increases drag and biplanes need extensive bracing, which causes additional drag. Biplanes are distinguished from tandem wing arrangements, where the wings are placed forward and aft, instead of above and below; the term is occasionally used in biology, to describe the wings of some flying animals.
In a biplane aircraft, two wings are placed one above the other. Each provides part of the lift, although they are not able to produce twice as much lift as a single wing of similar size and shape because the upper and the lower are working on nearly the same portion of the atmosphere and thus interfere with each other's behaviour. For example, in a wing of aspect ratio 6, a wing separation distance of one chord length, the biplane configuration will only produce about 20 percent more lift than a single wing of the same planform; the lower wing is attached to the fuselage, while the upper wing is raised above the fuselage with an arrangement of cabane struts, although other arrangements have been used. Either or both of the main wings can support ailerons, while flaps are more positioned on the lower wing. Bracing is nearly always added between the upper and lower wings, in the form of wires and/or slender interplane struts positioned symmetrically on either side of the fuselage; the primary advantage of the biplane over a monoplane is to combine great stiffness with light weight.
Stiffness requires structural depth and, where early monoplanes had to have this added with complicated extra bracing, the box kite or biplane has a deep structure and is therefore easier to make both light and strong. A braced monoplane wing must support itself while the two wings of a biplane help to stiffen each other; the biplane is therefore inherently stiffer than the monoplane. The structural forces in the spars of a biplane wing tend to be lower, so the wing can use less material to obtain the same overall strength and is therefore much lighter. A disadvantage of the biplane was the need for extra struts to space the wings apart, although the bracing required by early monoplanes reduced this disadvantage; the low power supplied by the engines available in the first years of aviation meant that aeroplanes could only fly slowly. This required an lower stalling speed, which in turn required a low wing loading, combining both large wing area with light weight. A biplane wing of a given span and chord has twice the area of a monoplane the same size and so can fly more or for a given flight speed can lift more weight.
Alternatively, a biplane wing of the same area as a monoplane has lower span and chord, reducing the structural forces and allowing it to be lighter. Biplanes suffer aerodynamic interference between the two planes; this means that a biplane does not in practice obtain twice the lift of the similarly-sized monoplane. The farther apart the wings are spaced the less the interference, but the spacing struts must be longer. Given the low speed and power of early aircraft, the drag penalty of the wires and struts and the mutual interference of airflows were minor and acceptable factors; as engine power rose after World War One, the thick-winged cantilever monoplane became practicable and, with its inherently lower drag and higher speed, from around 1918 it began to replace the biplane in most fields of aviation. The smaller biplane wing allows greater maneuverability. During World War One, this further enhanced the dominance of the biplane and, despite the need for speed, military aircraft were among the last to abandon the biplane form.
Specialist sports aerobatic biplanes are still made. Biplanes were designed with the wings positioned directly one above the other. Moving the upper wing forward relative to the lower one is called positive stagger or, more simply stagger, it can help increase lift and reduce drag by reducing the aerodynamic interference effects between the two wings, makes access to the cockpit easier. Many biplanes have staggered wings. Common examples from the 1930s include the de Havilland Tiger Moth, Bücker Bü 131 Jungmann and Travel Air 2000, it is possible to place the lower wing's leading edge ahead of the upper wing, giving negative stagger. This is done in a given design for practical engineering reasons. Examples of negative stagger include Breguet 14 and Beechcraft Staggerwing. However, positive stagger is more common; the space enclosed by a set of interplane struts is called a bay, hence a biplane or triplane with one set of such struts connecting the wings on each side of the aircraft is a single-bay biplane.
This provided sufficient strength for smaller aircraft such as the First World War-era Fokker D. VII fighter and the Second World War de Havilland Tiger Moth basic trainer; the larger two-seat Curtiss JN-4 Jenny is a two bay biplane, the extra bay being necessary as overlong bays are prone to flexing and can fail. The SPAD S. XIII fighter, while appearing to be a two bay bip
Iowa State University
Iowa State University of Science and Technology referred to as Iowa State, is a public land-grant and space-grant research university located in Ames, United States. It is the largest university in the state of Iowa and the third largest university in the Big 12 athletic conference. Iowa State is classified as a research university with "highest research activity" by the Carnegie Foundation for the Advancement of Teaching. Iowa State is a member of the Association of American Universities, which consists of 60 leading research universities in North America. Founded in 1858 and coeducational from its start, Iowa State became the nation's first designated land-grant institution when the Iowa Legislature accepted the provisions of the 1862 Morrill Act on September 11, 1862, making Iowa the first state in the nation to do so. Iowa State's academic offerings are administered today through eight colleges, including the graduate college, that offer over 100 bachelor's degree programs, 112 master's degree programs, 83 at the Ph.
D. level, plus a professional degree program in Veterinary Medicine. Iowa State University's athletic teams, the Cyclones, compete in Division I of the NCAA and are a founding member of the Big 12 Conference; the Cyclones have won numerous NCAA national championships. In 1856, the Iowa General Assembly enacted legislation to establish the Iowa Agricultural College and Model Farm; this institution was established on March 22, 1858, by the General Assembly. Story County was chosen as the location on June 21, 1859, beating proposals from Johnson, Kossuth and Polk counties; the original farm of 648 acres was purchased for a cost of $5,379. Iowa was the first state in the nation to accept the provisions of the Morrill Act of 1862. Iowa subsequently designated Iowa State as the land-grant college on March 29, 1864. From the start, Iowa Agricultural College focused on the ideals that higher education should be accessible to all and that the university should teach liberal and practical subjects; these ideals are integral to the land-grant university.
The institution was coeducational from the first preparatory class admitted in 1868. The formal admitting of students began the following year, the first graduating class of 1872 consisted of 24 men and two women; the Farm House, the first building on the Iowa State campus, was completed in 1861 before the campus was occupied by students or classrooms. It became the home of the superintendent of the Model Farm and in years, the deans of Agriculture, including Seaman Knapp and "Tama Jim" Wilson. Iowa State's first president, Adonijah Welch stayed at the Farm House and penned his inaugural speech in a second floor bedroom; the college's first farm tenants primed the land for agricultural experimentation. The Iowa Experiment Station was one of the university's prominent features. Practical courses of instruction were taught, including one designed to give a general training for the career of a farmer. Courses in mechanical, civil and mining engineering were part of the curriculum. In 1870, President Welch and I. P. Robert, professor of agriculture, held three-day farmers' institutes at Cedar Falls, Council Bluffs and Muscatine.
These became the earliest institutes held off-campus by a land grant institution and were the forerunners of 20th century extension. In 1872, the first courses were given in domestic economy and were taught by Mary B. Welch, the president's wife. Iowa State became the first land grant university in the nation to offer training in domestic economy for college credit. In 1879, the "School" of Veterinary Science was organized, the first state veterinary college in the United States; this was a two-year course leading to a diploma. The veterinary course of study contained classes in zoology, anatomy of domestic animals, veterinary obstetrics, sanitary science. William M. Beardshear was appointed President of Iowa State in 1891. During his tenure, Iowa Agricultural College came of age. Beardshear developed new agricultural programs and was instrumental in hiring premier faculty members such Anson Marston, Louis B. Spinney, J. B. Weems, Perry G. Holden, Maria Roberts, he expanded the university administration, the following buildings were added to the campus: Morrill Hall.
In his honor, Iowa State named its central administrative building after Beardshear in 1925. In 1898, reflecting the school's growth during his tenure, it was renamed Iowa State College of Agricultural and Mechanic Arts, or Iowa State for short. Today, Beardshear Hall holds the following offices: President, Vice-President, Secretary, Registrar and student financial aid. Catt Hall is named after famed alumna Carrie Chapman Catt and is the home of the College of Liberal Arts and Sciences. In 1912 Iowa State had its first Homecoming celebration; the idea was first proposed by Professor Samuel Beyer, the college's “patron saint of athletics,” who suggested that Iowa State inaugurate a celebration for alumni during the annual football game against rival University of Iowa. Iowa State's new president, Raymond A. Pearson, liked the idea and issued a special invitation to alumni two weeks prior to the event: “We need you, we must have you. Come and see what a school you have made in Iowa State College.
Find a way.” In October 2012 Iowa State marked its 100th Homecoming with a "CYtennial" Celebration. Iowa State celebrated its first VEISHEA on
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