New technologies provide opportunities. While some fear them or dismiss them, others embrace them and find ways to harness their potential. Some turn out to be life-changing. At West Virginia Wesleyan College, we have a history of being embracers of new ways to learn and to provide service.
Telegraphy and Railroading
If you had gone into the Administration Building between the years of 1906-08, for example, you might have encountered Harry Francis Brittingham setting up the equipment for his Railroading and Telegraphy class. H.F., as he was known, had worked with the Baltimore and Ohio Railroad as a clerk and a car distributor in this booming business of railroads. Someone at Wesleyan realized that there was a great need for educating people to work in this field. Maybe it was President John Wier or perhaps George W. Broyles, Principal of the School of Commerce. This was only five years after Marconi’s groundbreaking wireless transmission across the Atlantic.
Although this particular book was not published until 1911, Soule’s Practical Method of Training: Telegraphy, Railroading, Express and Freight published by the University Press, Cambridge, USA may have been very much like the textbook used for these classes. And the machines may have looked and sounded much like these:
After 1908, however, we don’t see this particular course mentioned until 1942 when Dr. Nicholas Hyma and Professor William Hallam were training students for defense purposes and military service in World War II. Again, a specific need being met by the faculty and curriculum.
Also In Art
We have also seen innovations used in the curriculum in the area of Fine Arts. From 1891-1901 courses were taught in Crayoning.
West Virginia Wesleyan College offered courses in Crayoning from 1891-1901, which is very interesting considering that Binney & Smith did not begin making what we now know as crayons until 1902 and did not begin marketing them until 1903. Taught by WVWC Giants named Miss Maude McFarland (1891-94), Miss Persis H. Heermans (1894-96), Miss Alice Divine (1896-99), and Myrtle McElroy (1899-1901), art classes being taught at the college were up on the very latest of materials and methods. The company registered its patent for Carbon Black, it’s first breakthrough, on May 26, 1891.
The word Crayon was coined by Mrs. Edwin Binney by combining the French word for chalk (craie) and the Latin root for the word oily (ola).
Resourceful and Relevant
In the November 1964 Profile Newsletter, an alumni publication, several stories show that the technology trend was continuing. All of this in only four pages!
- Burroughs Computer Computing, tells of a quarter-million dollar main frame computer which was awarded to Wesleyan — this computer was a “decided rarity in West Virginia” and one of only five awarded in the country! Dr. William R. Willis, professor of Physics, was learning and managing it as well as training faculty and staff to make great use of it.
- Wesleyan FM Radio to Operate Soon tells of the educational and cultural benefits to a nine county area – serving more than a quarter of the state of West Virginia.
- IN Wesleyan, tells of a “professionally filmed and narrated program is recognized as one of the finest productions of its kind and shows the total College program and facilities in action.”
- Wesleyan Tele-Lecture A West Virginia First
- And the issue highlights the Nursing Building on the Boards as well as celebrates the fact that the progress in fundraising for what would become Christopher Hall of Science in an article entitled Science Building A Giant Step Closer.
Then And Now — Resourceful and Relevant
___.___. /___ ___ ___ /___ ___ ___ /.___..