MIT metallurgy department founding (1888)

Brief institutional history — MIT founded 1865 as geology and mining; metallurgy arrives 1888 in concert with Sorby and the petrography-to-steel turn.

Metallurgy came to this department in 1888. MIT was formed in 1865 — this was the geology department, geology and mining. Metallurgy didn't exist in 1865. It wasn't until the 1880s that Sorby and others started studying this stuff. That's why I did that term paper I talked about — I went back into the basement of the MIT libraries, caught a cold that fall reading these old original papers from the 1890s, because we were trying to figure out what was going on in the structure of steel.