1906
The San Francisco earthquake on April 18 left half a million people homeless. The government
passed the Pure Food and Drug Act. Lee De Forest invented the triode vacuum tube. Theodore
Roosevelt shared the Nobel Peace Prize with Bertha von Suttner of Austria. A Stanley Steamer
automobile set a mile record of 28.1 seconds. Dudley Sargent, Physical Education Director at
Harvard, cautioned women against playing physical contact sports such as basketball, for they
were too dangerous for the delicate female body. Robert Turner invented the automatic
carriage return for the typewriter. O. Henry’s
The Four Million
became a best seller. Theater-
goers flocked to George M. Cohan’s latest success,
Forty-five Minutes From Broadway.
Engineering Assembly
Decennial Celebration
Levinus Clarkson Award
Clarkson Banner
Alma Mater
Commencement
Freshmen Rules
Chapel Rush
Freshmen Banquet
Chemistry I
Laundrying
Engineering Assembly.
Recognizing the need for student self-government, Clarkson’s faculty
on September 13, 1905, appointed a temporary committee to consider the plans and scope of a
student representative organization. Such an organization would consist of 12 students: two
from each of the four Engineering classes, and two from each of the two Home Economics
classes. Each representative was to be in good and regular standing, to have no “conditions”
about his or her course, and to have no outstanding financial or other obligations to the
Institution. Each representative was to present to the Director of the School a certificate of
election signed by the president and secretary of each class. Coincident with this creation was
the need for students to work on planning the Decennial celebration in November 1906.
Its first members were: seniors Ralph B. Leonard and Francis L. Perkins, juniors David
D. Thompson and Robert C. Huntington, sophomores Louis Rutherford and Hugh M. Sprague,
and freshmen Bryan W. Morse and George Welker; second year economics members Sarah
Bush and Corinne Frame; and first year economics members L.E. Danforth and S.E. Mott. This
group first met as a student assembly on January 19, 1906, to elect Ralph Leonard as chairman
and George Welker as secretary, and to plan Decennial Charter Day exercises for March 19,
1906.
Calling itself originally the Students’ Decennial Committee, this group became a part of
the Clarkson Engineering Assembly. Ratified on Founder’s Day 1906, its constitution called for
two branches of the Assembly: the Upper House and the Lower House, respectively. The Upper
House was composed of the 12 members of the faculty and instructional force; the Lower
