World War I

Throop Students Practice Trench Warfare in Front of Pasadena Hall, c. 1918

World War I catalyzed Throop’s next transformation. An advocate of “patriotic preparedness,” James Scherer added military training to the curriculum.

The Throop Tech, January 1918

Camp Throop Flyer, 1917

Inspector’s Report on Throop College, 1917

Private H. M. Hubbard Pass Card, December 14, 1918

Throop Students Practice Trench Warfare, c. 1918

Throop Students Survey Using Plane Tables, c. 1918

Meanwhile, George Ellery Hale organized the National Research Council in Washington, bringing scientists together to pursue research on subjects relevant to the war. In addition to Hale, its leaders included chemist Arthur Amos Noyes and physicist Robert Millikan, both of whom would permanently join a growing Throop after the war.

George Ellery Hale Letter to Robert A. Millikan, 1917

Charles Proctor, Robert A. Millikan, Arthur Mason, and George Winchester at the National Research Council, August 1918

Millikan had established his reputation as a physicist with his oil drop experiment to determine the charge of an electron, conducted at the University of Chicago in 1910. During World War I, he was commissioned in the Army Signal Corps as a lieutenant colonel, and served as chairman of the National Research Council’s committees on physics, optical glass, and submarine investigations. In 1921 Millikan came to Caltech, where, as director of the Norman Bridge Laboratory of Physics and chairman of the Executive Council, he led the Institute until 1946.

George Ellery Hale, Arthur Amos Noyes, and Robert A. Millikan in Front of Gates Laboratory, 1917