Physics at UVM in the Early Years

Hammond, Physics Instrumentation Coordinator The University of Vermont Abstract: In 1807, when the University of Vermont had only one faculty member in addition to the president, a majo

Robert G Arns, Professor Emeritus of Physics

David A Hammond, Physics Instrumentation Coordinator

The University of Vermont

Abstract: In 1807, when the University of Vermont had only one faculty

member in addition to the president, a major purchase of apparatus was made from John Prince of Salem, Massachusetts, premier scientific

instrument maker of the young nation and an agent for European

instrument makers The apparatus cost much more than the annual salary

of the faculty member, James Dean, Tutor and later Professor of

Mathematics, Natural Philosophy, and Astronomy It was another two years before a second faculty member was hired and several decades

before there was a second physicist The answers to questions such as

“why this purchase?” and “how could UVM afford it?” and “how was it used?” provide clues to the nature of the physics teaching of the time, of the University’s aspirations, and of some aspects of its chaotic early

history The apparatus and the Philosophical Chamber, the room at the very heart of the University in which it was stored and used and in which the University’s Trustees held their regular meetings, were destroyed in the Old Mill fire of May 27, 1824 George Wyllys Benedict joined UVM

a few months later as Professor of Mathematics and Natural History He was a talented fundraiser and played an important role in helping the

University recover from the Old Mill fire He also taught physics from

1825 to 1839 Letters that he left tell us much about how physics teaching was organized in the early 1830s and notes of his “Electricity Lectures” reveal the state of understanding of electrical phenomena Important

purchases to re-equip UVM for teaching physics and astronomy were

made in 1835 Physics had burst on the UVM scene in a big way in 1807, but it was slow to recover from the University’s struggles in the years that followed

Colloquium, Department of Physics, University of Vermont, November 5, 2004

Our story begins in 1780 That year, Samuel Williams became the third person to be named Hollis Professor of Mathematics and Natural Philosophy

at Harvard University He had graduated from Harvard in 1761, and was excused from the commencement ceremonies so that he could accompany the then Hollis Professor, John Winthrop, on a scientific expedition – the first scientific expedition in America – to view a transit of Venus visible in Newfoundland Williams subsequently studied theology, was ordained in

1765, and served as pastor of the church in Bradford, New Hampshire There he preached and taught for the next 15 years; his teaching included preparing young men to enter college studies The most famous of his students during this period was Benjamin Thompson, later known as Count Rumford

At Harvard, as Hollis Professor, Williams became widely recognized

as an able scholar He received honorary degrees from the University of Edinburgh in 1785 and from Yale in 1786 In 1788 he came under a cloud owing to his inability to account for the disappearance of Harvard College funds of which he was the trustee He resigned from his Harvard position and took off for the wilderness – Vermont was the wilderness in those days – leaving his family to fend for themselves in Cambridge

Williams lived hand-to-mouth for a while and then became pastor of achurch in Rutland, Vermont In 1789 he wrote to his wife, still in

Cambridge, that:

“Having secured what can be done from the parish, my whole aim now is to influence and persuade persons of note here to found a college.”

Thus it was that Williams, a disgraced academic, seeking a college in the hope that he could return to academic life, made common cause with Ira Allen, a land speculator, who was interested in boosting land values in the Champlain Valley Ira Allen was an early believer that a university is good for economic development Ira Allen and Sam Williams worked together: Williams supplied the knowledge of higher education, wrote the documents,

developed the strategy, and rounded up financial support; Ira Allen signed the papers Indeed, Ira Allen was in Europe for a critical five-year period during the founding, part of that time spent in British and French jails The University was chartered by the Vermont legislature on November 3, 1791, but had a hard time collecting enough money to get started The first

students were admitted ten years later, in 1801, and graduated in 1804

In the beginning, nearly all of the teaching was done by the President,

Daniel Clarke Sanders He was the first of nine Congregational ministers to

serve successively as president of the University He had graduated from Harvard in 1788 He then got religion and was baptized the following year

He studied theology He was licensed to preach in 1790 and ended up

serving a congregation in Vergennes, Vermont In October 1799 Sanders moved into a rent-free house that had been built by the UVM Trustees He also presided over the Congregational church in Burlington, taught students

in the house for the next two years to prepare them for college-level studies, tended the surrounding farmland, 25 acres of which was assigned to his use, and cut his own firewood The deal called for him to receive $400 per year

“for preaching to the town” plus $12 per year from the University for every enrolled student In 1803 he was promised a total of $800 per year to use forhis own salary and that of a tutor – instead of the bounty on heads – but “to

be paid for by tuition” UVM rarely had enough money to pay Sanders more than a fraction of his salary Tuition was only $20.00 per year There were very few students, a total of 30 students in 1804 when the first class graduated The total grew to 36 in 1812 when war intruded; by 1822, the total was only 22 students To make the financial situation worse, Ira Allen never made good on the 4,000 English pounds (worth about $17,680 in 1807) that he had pledged in order to get the legislature to locate UVM in Burlington

President Sanders sometimes had assistance from a succession of rather poorly-paid “tutors.” The first came in 1804 and remained only a few weeks Then Sidney Willard came in 1805 at an annual salary of $250 and served for two years The third person to serve as a tutor, James Dean, started in 1807 and taught mathematics and natural philosophy In 1809 he was named the first Professor of Mathematics, Natural Philosophy, and Astronomy at an annual salary of $400 per year Indeed, he was the very first professor hired by the University According to the University’s

records, Dean was owed $847.15 in back pay by January 1, 1811, (and the president was owed $2,138.98) Dean continued as Professor until the

University was shut down during the War of 1812 when the army

commandeered the Old Mill Dean then taught at an academy in Montpelier

until 1817 when he was appointed Professor of Mathematics and Natural

Philosophy at Dartmouth University, a new institution formed by the

governor and legislature of New Hampshire in an attempt to take over

Dartmouth College The two institutions dueled in the courts for two years

(with Daniel Webster representing the College) and in 1819 the U.S

Supreme Court ruled that a state could not dissolve contracts such as the Royal Charter that had established Dartmouth College in 1769 Dartmouth

University was dead and Dean was again on the move until he returned to

UVM as Professor in 1822

On May 27, 1824, the Old Mill burned to the ground Teaching

equipment was destroyed Many students went elsewhere to continue their studies; others were taught in a shed on the property The then president, Daniel Haskell, suffered a nervous breakdown and was unable to continue James Dean was appointed interim president Shortly thereafter, he

dismissed four students for poor grades The Trustees, concerned about the loss of tuition revenue, reversed the decision Dean promptly resigned as president

We’ll return to 1824 later For now I’ll simply note that in 1827 Deanwent on to become a founder of Vermont’s first manufacturing company, a glass factory in Winooski (Dean was also a founder and director of the

Champlain Ferry Co., which is still in operation.) In 1831 Dean and his partner overextended themselves financially by opening a factory overseas

in order to exploit cheap foreign labor – another first for Vermont – overseasmeant Plattsburgh, New York, in this case Dean’s sold his interest in the glass manufacturing business in 1839 (Thereafter Winooski was running out of firewood, and the factory was moved to Canada in 1846; it was out of business by 1850.) Dean died in 1849; his remains are buried in

Burlington’s Elmwood Cemetery

Now back to 1824

Scientific Equipment for the New College

The loss of the Old Mill was a serious blow, both in terms of the building, but especially in terms of the teaching equipment it contained From the time he arrived in 1799, President Daniel Clarke Sanders was grubbing to find books to furnish a library for students, located in his home, and to find teaching equipment Then, in 1807, three Trustees of the

College, John Pomeroy, David Russell, and Col William Harrington, pooled

$700 of their personal funds to purchase scientific equipment from John Prince of Salem, Massachusetts On August 15, 1807, the College’s Board

of Trustees acknowledged the existence of the equipment and voted to

permit it to be deposited in the Old Mill room known as the Philosophical Chamber – the most significant room in the Old Mill, well-suited to teachingand public functions such as the meetings of the Board – and stated that:

“it is the sense of the Corporation that Lectures by the Rev

Sam’l Williams, delivered in the College would be beneficial to

the Institution, and they offer the use of the Chamber for that

purpose.”

An advertisement by Sam Williams in the Burlington newspaper two weeks later (on September 1, 1807), touted the: “costly and elegant Philosophical Apparatus now placed in the Philosophical Chamber in the University of Vermont.” It also announced a course of PHILOSOPHICAL LECTURES, about twenty in number, which would take place over a period of about six weeks beginning October 9, 1807, and would use the new apparatus The cost to attend was set at $10 for the entire course or 75 cents for an

individual lecture These were public lectures that were also attended by theUniversity’s students

We do not know what was contained in these lectures and lecture notes that we have seen of courses given by Sam Williams earlier at Harvard– which had similar equipment for teaching – are not revealing However,

we believe that the equipment on hand at UVM was cutting edge in quality

and subject matter The lectures could have been and probably were both sophisticated and exciting.

So: we know that the University could not have afforded such

princely equipment for teaching science if three Trustees had not come forward to put up their own money for the purchase Nor was there any prospect that UVM would be able to buy the equipment from these three Trustees any time soon We also know that the first person to use the

equipment for teaching was Samuel Williams; he presented a series of

PHILOSOPHICAL LECTURES on his own, but with the approval of the

University’s Trustees So who do you think persuaded the three trustees to cough up the big bucks? Probably Samuel Williams, who wanted to get back into an academic position after his unfortunate history at Harvard What better way than to show what he could do in the hope that he would beappointed professor or perhaps made a Trustee? This is only conjecture on

my part, but it seems plausible

Alas, Williams was not given a faculty appointment or made a UVM Trustee He gave the lectures again in 1808 and that was the end of his association with UVM As noted earlier, James Dean became the first

Professor of Mathematics, Natural Philosophy, and Astronomy in 1809

As for Williams, why didn’t the University bite? Perhaps he wanted more money than the University could provide Williams also preached in Burlington while here and perhaps his Harvard-style theology – which was regarded as quite liberal in theological terms – was not welcomed We know that Sanders, also a Harvard liberal, got himself into trouble with his congregation for his preaching and left Burlington in 1814 His successor learned his theology at Yale, considered to be more conservative

Finally, it should be noted that Sanders was in a class taught by

Williams at Harvard in 1788 when Williams was caught with his hands in the till Perhaps his bad reputation was simply too much to take So much

for Sam Williams He went on to found the Rutland Herald and do other

good things, but he had no further connections with UVM Now, let’s talk about the equipment

John Prince and UVM’s First Scientific Equipment

John Prince was born in Boston in 1751 and graduated from Harvard

in 1776 He then studied theology (under Samuel Williams, incidentally)

He served as pastor of the First Unitarian Church in Salem, Massachusetts

for fifty-seven years and seven months beginning in 1779 He was also

deeply interested in science He carried on a lively side-line business of

making and repairing scientific instruments during this entire period He also bought and sold used scientific equipment and served as an agent for European instruments makers He supplied scientific instruments to Harvard(which had lost its teaching apparatus in a fire in 1764), Rhode Island

College (now Brown University), Williams College, Bowdoin, Dartmouth College, Middlebury, Yale, Union College, Transylvania, and others – as well as to the University of Vermont

Prince published a detailed description of an improved vacuum pump

in 1783 He amassed a substantial personal library In 1795, he received an honorary degree from Brown University

Now a word about his vacuum pump Although crude by today’s standards, the pump really represented a substantial advance in pump technology Prior to the improvements made by Prince, the best artificial vacuum

obtainable was 1.27 mm of Hg (Schechner, pp 453, 464) Prince’s pump did twelve times better, reaching one-tenth of a Torr Here’s a picture of the

“floor model” of the pump

Now to the other instruments that UVM obtained in 1807 We found a copy

of the packing slip for the shipment and have verified that it is in Prince’s handwriting

The categories were (1) Pneumatics (the vacuum pump and accessories); (2) Electricity, an electrostatic generator and various accessories, including an electrical discharge tube and a battery of Leyden Jars;

Disk-type electrostatic generator

Cylinder-type electrostatic generator

Thunder House

“Battery” of Leyden Jars

Jointed Discharger

(3) Magnetism, especially a five-layer used horseshoe magnet – said to be the only piece that survived the Old Mill fire – and a compass, as well as other small magnets;