University of Virginia Library

Crane Donation.

Of the recent additions to this equipment the most important
is the gift of Mr. Charles R. Crane, of Chicago. This gift is a
collection of apparatus and machines for alternating current
work in electrical engineering, so selected as to enlarge and
complete the outfit already in use. Although serving actively as
vice-president of the Crane Valve Company, an enormous business
corporation, founded 55 years ago by his father, Mr. R. T.
Crane, who is still its president, Mr. Charles R. Crane has many
varied and vital interests outside his business. As president for
many years of the Municipal Voters' League of Chicago he has

exerted a powerful influence for good government in an independent
and non-partisan way. He was a close friend of the
late President Harper, of Chicago University, and was associated
with him in the heavy task of organizing that great
modern school. He is deeply interested in biological research
and has been for a long time the president of the Marine
Biological Laboratory at Woods Hole. His summer home at
Bridgeport, Conn., enables him to indulge on Buzzard's Bay and
Vineyard Sound that love of the sea, which carried him as a
lad on a voyage in a bark from New London to Java. Mr.
Crane's permanent home is in Chicago, but his wide reading and
deep study of American politics and world politics have brought
him the friendship and acquaintance of many national leaders
and have made him feel at home in many lands. He has long
known the University of Virginia and his gift to the Department
of Engineering is not the first of his discriminating acts of
generosity to this school.