Excerpt from Commemorative Address Gentlemen and Ladies, - Twenty-five years have passed since this building was finished and the Institute of Technology was opened, upon a very modest scale and with a very small number of scholars; but the germ was there, and its rapid growth has come from allowing the school to develop by a process of evolution which has accommodated its teaching gradually and surely to the wants of the age, until, although far from perfect, it is to-day in completeness and comprehensiveness of technical instruction unsurpassed, if not unrivalled, by any institution of its kind. The term "Technology" was given it by Dr. Jacob Bigelow, one of its earliest advocates, to represent a new departure in the history of instruction. Previous to this attempt, science had been taught as other branches of polite learning, by the university method, with little profit to the ordinary student; while those who made it their serious study prepared to devote their lives to its service, with no thought of applying it to the affairs of life. Science, pursued for its own sake, had little concern for the demands of trade. Any such partnership was beneath its dignity, and justly so. A great change was approaching, however, in the industries of the country. About the Publisher Forgotten Books publishes hundreds of thousands of rare and classic books. Find more at www.forgottenbooks.com This book is a reproduction of an important historical work. Forgotten Books uses state-of-the-art technology to digitally reconstruct the work, preserving the original format whilst repairing imperfections present in the aged copy. In rare cases, an imperfection in the original, such as a blemish or missing page, may be replicated in our edition. We do, however, repair the vast majority of imperfections successfully; any imperfections that remain are intentionally left to preserve the state of such historical works.