Looking Backwards by Alina G. '11

Like Bellamy’s young hero, I too am back in Boston. Except its been about a week, and as far as I can tell the city hasn’t been transformed into a socialist utopia. But, prior to leaving for home for spring break (during which time I slept, ate, ran, and got dog hair on just about everything I brought with me), I paid a visit to Kim’s office and did some backwards-looking of my own.

Kim has a collection of old Techniques (the MIT yearbook), and flipping through the pages from as far back at 1918, it was interesting to see what has changed, and what remains the same. Many of you will be experiencing MIT for yourselves this spring, whether for the first time on a campus tour or during CPW (for those of you attending-I hope you are getting excited! CPW is overwhelmingly awesome), but take a look:

This is what it used to take to get in to MIT-definitely a lot less work for the admissions officers, that’s for sure…

Of course, in 1918 there were only 216 undergraduates. Also, apparently it took 8.5 minutes to walk around Killian court inside, or 2 hours and 15 minutes if you took the scenic route. No sample size or standard deviation given though…

Once you were here, MIT offered a fine range of Courses (our numbered way of doing majors) for you to choose from. Can you guess which ones have changed a little in the last century or so?

If you think this stuff is as neat as I do, and want more,you are in luck! As part of the MIT150 celebration, both the MIT Libraries and the Archive have created a couple cool ways to browse historical material related to MIT. There is this awesome interactive timeline as well as the Libraries’ “150 Years in the Stacks” blog, which is highlighting one book a day from their collection, for each year in MIT’s history. The books aren’t just about science/engineering-one of my favorites is this one, the book that inspired the always-hilarious Bulwer-Lytton contest. (for an easier to read link, there’s always good ol’ wikipedia).