Student Voices
Student publications were rare in 1876, and surviving copies of them are even rarer. The few places where MIT students socialized together in 1876, their drawing rooms, local bars, and social clubs, didn’t produce many records that made their way into the archives. Still, through what does survive, such as the class notes of several members of the class of 1876, we can get a glimpse into at least the academic life of MIT students a hundred and fifty years ago.
William Otis Crosby (class of 1876) was a MIT trained Geologist and later a professor at the Institute. While some of what students learned at the time has since been disproven, such as the theory that mountains were created by the contraction of the Earth’s cooling crust, other lessons remain relevant to today, such as the effect of excess CO2 on the climate:
“Changes in the eccentricity of the Earth’s orbit would not be sufficient to produce such changes of climate. The true explanation of the thing is to be found in the constitution of the atmosphere - for it is well known that a few percent of CO2 in the atmosphere would be sufficient to prevent the radiation of obscure heat from the Earth’s surface”
