Surveying the Field

In 1871, Thayer School of Engineering at Dartmouth officially opened for business. The fledgling school boasted just three students and one professor but also a proud lineage and a bright future. General Sylvanus Thayer, a member of Dartmouth's class of 1807 and the fifth superintendent of the United States Military Academy at West Point, had turned his sights back to Hanover in 1867 at the ripe old age of eighty-one. He had accrued by then a stunning list of life accomplishments, including the establishment of the country's first school of civil engineering during his time at West Point.

Thayer intended for his alma mater to establish a similar program: he donated a total of $70,000 to the college as well as an impressive library of books and manuscripts related to engineering, many of which we still have to this day. He also recommended a West Point graduate, Joseph Fletcher, to be the first (and only) faculty member and dean of the new professional school. His mission accomplished, Thayer passed away in 1872 but he is still remembered to this day in certain circles as "The Father of the Military Academy" and one of the earliest proponents of engineering education in America.

Perhaps Thayer's influence is what made Dartmouth faculty insist that all undergraduates take a surveying course, even before the School of Engineering was formally established. We have several of the student field notebooks from those classes, and it's obvious from looking through them that at least a few of the undergraduates struggled to appreciate the science of engineering. Robert Bolenius, a member of the class of 1870, certainly seemed more interested in creating whimsical doodles in his assignment book than demonstrating his surveying prowess. His drawings, whether of a naked man fighting with a dog over a pair of pants next to a data table or an abstract geometrical shape converted into a Civil War tent, make us hope that Robert went on to discover a profession less rigid in its approach to seeing the world than engineering.

To look through the surveying notebooks of Robert Bolenius and other undergraduate surveying students, come to Rauner and ask for DA-31, Box 2912.