INAUGURAL ADDRESS OF PRESIDENT CHARLES O. THOMPSON DELIVERED AT THE OPENING OF THE ROSE POLYTECHNIC INSTITUTE MARCH 7, 1883. PUBLISHED BY ORDER OF THE BOARD OF MANAGERS. TERRE HAUTE, IND.: C. W. BROWN, (GLOBE OFFICE), PRINTER. ADDRESS. The Rose Polytechnic Institute is a school of technology. In order to understand the functions of the school it is necessary to take a brief survey of the field of technical training. This phrase describes all those forms of training youth which deal with the application of art or of science to the industrial arts. Those schools in which designing for the patterns of textile fabrics, or for the decoration of wood, iron, pottery, gems, etc., is the principal end, are called art schools, or schools of design, of which the South Kensington system is the most famous example; all those in which the principles of physical science are studied with reference to their application to the solution of practical problems in building, machine construction, and design, or in civil engineering, are called polytechnic or technological schools. There is great confusion just now in the use of terms, technical education being used to describe all that which aims at a directly practical end as opposed to the education given at the college; while that part of it which does not deal with ornament or textile design is sometimes described by the same term. The word technology, which formerly signified the terms used in the sciences, now means the application of the sciences to industrial ends. The term polytechnic, originally used to describe schools of technology, has refused to yield to the more desirable synonym, technological, partly because it is an easier word, and partly because it contains a suggestion of the many-sidedness of the subject which the better word lacks. There is no good word corresponding to polytechnic or technological to apply to the persons who practice the profession indicated, and so these persons are called, now as always, engineers, and the business engineering. A few still cling to the term scientific schools in speaking of these institutions. In the present prevailing confusion of terms the best that can be said is that a polytechnic school teaches technology to engineers. Below the grade of the polytechnic there are multitudes of schools and parts of schools that teach the elements of the mechanic arts-many of |