University of Virginia Library

IV. TECHNOLOGY

Section A. Engineering.

There are five fairly extensive collections in Virginia of
material on engineering: at the University of Virginia, 8,437
volumes; at the Virginia Polytechnic Institute, 6,983 volumes;
at the State Library, 6,020 volumes; at the Coast Artillery
School, 5,701 volumes; and at the specialized Norfolk and Western
Transportation Library, 2,500 books and 3,000 pamphlets, a
total of 5,500. Smaller collections are to be found in Lexington,
at the Virginia Military Institute and at Washington and Lee
University. But as the Engineering School at Washington and Lee
has recently been discontinued, further additions will probably
not be made to that collection.

The Norfolk and Western Railway Transportation Library[21] at
Roanoke contains material on the economic, geological, and
historical phases of transportation as well as on engineering;
and attention has been given to air, highway, and water transportation
as well as to railways. A considerable part of the
collection, however, deals with railway engineering. The material
is chiefly in the form of books, pamphlets, and railway
reports. There are also a few engineering journals; and there
are sets of the proceedings of the American Railway Association
and of its Freight Claims Division, of the American Railway
Engineering and Maintenance of Way Association, of the American
Railway Master Mechanics' Association, of the Master Car Builders'
Association, and of the Railway Stockkeepers' Association.

In the collection at the Coast Artillery School at Fort
Monroe the emphasis is on electrical, mechanical, and military
engineering. There are runs of eighteen journals, the more complete
files being those of the Journal of the Franklin Institute,
the Military Engineer, the Scientific American, the Transactions
of the American Society of Civil Engineers, and the Transactions
of the Society of Mechanical Engineers.

At the State Library, city and state reports and United
States serial publications form about two-thirds of the collection.
The points of stress are hydraulic, mining, railway, and
highway engineering. There are sets of twenty journals; several
of these, such as the American Railroad Journal, the Artizan,
the Journal of the Franklin Institute, and the Journal of the
Society of Arts, London, go back to the first half of the

nineteenth century. There is some material on the history of
engineering.

The collection at the Virginia Polytechnic Institute covers
practically all types of engineering, as may be seen by an
enumeration of the volumes in each branch: aeronautical engineering,
281 volumes; agricultural engineering, 109; architectural
engineering (including volumes on architecture), 741; ceramic
engineering, 81; chemical engineering (not including theoretical
chemistry), 512; civil engineering, 1,191; electrical engineering,
978; general engineering, 714; graphics, 124; industrial
engineering, 438; mechanical engineering, 1,091; mining engineering,
723; the grand total being 6,983 volumes. Of engineering
periodicals and society proceedings there are 134 different
titles. The collection includes about thirty volumes of engineering
history and about twenty volumes of engineering biography.
There is a complete set of the Transactions of the Newcomen
Society which deal mainly with the history of engineering and of
technology.

At the University of Virginia also the collection covers
all branches; but there is emphasis on civil, electrical, mechanical,
and chemical engineering. There are files of 307 engineering
serials, of which ninety-five are currently received. The
sets of the following are complete: Proceedings of the American
Society of Civil Engineers, the Refrigerating Data Book of the
American Society of Refrigerating Engineers, the Automatic
Electric Review, the Bell System Technical Journal, the Bell Telephone
Quarterly, Civil Engineering, Communication and Broadcast
Engineering, Electrical Maintenance, the Transactions of the
Illuminating Engineering Society, Industrial and Engineering
Chemistry, the Transactions of the Institution of Chemical
Engineers, the Proceedings of the Institution of Mechanical
Engineers, the Engineering Research Bulletin of the Department
of Engineering Research of the University of Michigan, the Contributed
Technical Papers on Stratospheres of the National Geographic
Society, the Bulletin Series of the Engineering Experiment
Station of the Oregon Agricultural College, Television,
published by the R.C.A. Institute, Inc., the Series of Monograms
on Electrical Engineering published in Great Britain, the Strowger
Technical Journal, and the Publications of the School of Engineering
of Yale University.

Section B. Military and Naval Science.

As is to be expected, the largest collection in Virginia of
books on military science is at the Coast Artillery School at
Fort Monroe, Old Point Comfort. On military and naval science
combined there are 10,469 volumes, but by far the major part
deals with military science, with emphasis on artillery. As an
indication of the research possibilities in the history of

military science, a dozen volumes may be listed from the collection;
namely, A. Bell's Treatise on the Art of War, 1803; Gaspard
H. Cotty's Encyclopédie Methodique, Dictionnaire de l'Artillerie,
1822; Cugnot's Elemens de l'Art Militaire Ancien et
Moderne, 1766; Etat Actuel de l'Art et de la Science Militaire à
la Chine, 1773; Friedrich II der Grosse, Military Instructions,
1762; Earl Orrery's Treatise on the Art of War, 1677; Préjugés
Militaires, par un Officier Autrichien, 1783; Puysegur's Art de
la Guerre, 1748; Duc de Rohan, Le Parfait Capitaine, 1648;
Maurice Saxe, Mes Reveries, 1757; Comte Turpin's Essai sur l'Art
de la Guerre, 1754; and R. Ward's Animadversions of Warre, 1639.
The plentiful sprinkling of foreign material in this collection
may be noted in this sample list; other evidences appear in the
fact that of eighty-two runs of military periodicals fifty-seven
are foreign, and of eighteen runs of naval periodicals thirteen
are foreign.

As is also to be expected, the collection numbering as a
whole nearly 20,000 volumes (See Part Two, III Science, Section
C., Geography.[22] ) at the Mariners' Museum Library is especially
strong in its section on naval science. In fact here is a high
point in the story of research possibilities in Virginia. Some
suggestion as to the quality of the material may be gained from
a brief list of titles of works published before 1750:-

L'Art de Batir les Vaisseaux, et d'en Perfectionner la Construc-
tion ... Amsterdam, 1719.

Bouguer, Pierre. Traite du Navire, de sa Construction, et de
ses Mouvemens. Paris, 1746.

Dassie. L'Architecture Navale, Contenant la Manière de Construire
les Navires, Galeres, et Chaloupses ... Paris, 1677.

[Dee, John] General and Rare Memorials Pertayning to the Perfect
Arte of Navigation. [London, 1577]

Euler, Leonhard. Scientia Navalis ... St. Petersburg, 1749.

Furtenbach, Joseph. Architectura Navalis. Ulm, 1629.

Hoste, Paul. L'Art des Armees Navalis. Lyon, 1697.

Hoste, Paul. Theorie de la Construction des Vaisseaux ... Lyon,
1697.

Sutherland, William. Britain's Glory; or, Shipbuilding Unvail'd.
London, 1740.

[Torchet de Boismele, Jean Baptiste] Histoire Générale de la
Marine. Paris, 1744.

Witsen, Nicholas. Aeloude en Hedendaegsche Scheepsbouw en Bestier.
Amsterdam, 1671.

Yk, Cornelis van. De Nederlandsche Scheepsbouw-Kunst open Gestelt.
Amsterdam, 1697.

The publications of the United States Navy Department and of the
British Admiralty are fully represented; so are Lloyd's Register
of Shipping, Lloyd's Register of Yachts, and Lloyd's Rules and
Regulations for the Construction and Classification of Steel

Vessels. There are long runs of such journals and society publications
as the Record of the American Bureau of Shipping, the
Journal of the American Society of Naval Engineers, the Bulletin
de Association Technique Maritime, Brassey's Naval and Shipping
Annual, the Transactions of the Institution of Engineers and Shipbuilders
in Scotland, the Transactions of the Institution of
Naval Engineers, the Mariner's Mirror, the Naval Chronicle, the
Navy Records Society, the Journal of the Royal United Service
Institution, and the Transactions of the Society of Naval Architects
and Marine Engineers. This section on naval science is
well supported by bibliographical works and by related material
in various branches of science and technology.

The State Library contains 1,710 volumes on military science
and 1,125 volumes on naval science, a total of 2,835 on these two
subjects. This is a general collection. But there is some emphasis
on military engineering, on naval architecture, shipbuilding,
and navigation, and on medical and sanitary services.

Smaller collections may be found at the Virginia Polytechnic
Institute and at the Virginia Military Institute, the military
material being the more extensive in both cases. Of special
interest at the Virginia Military Institute is a group of about
one hundred books (chiefly in French) from the libraries of
Generals Robert E. Lee and Joseph E. Johnston, occasional volumes
containing autograph notes.

Section C. Agriculture.

There are five libraries in Virginia which contain material
on agriculture in considerable quantity and of some distinction;
namely, the libraries at the Virginia Polytechnic Institute, at
Hampton Institute, at the State Library, at the University of Virginia,
and at the College of William and Mary.

There is a very live collection on this subject at the Virginia
Polytechnic Institute. It covers all fields except tropical
agriculture. There are sets of 253 periodicals, eleven of which
reach back before 1850. Of the publications of the United States
Department of Agriculture, of state departments of agriculture,
and of agricultural experiment stations there are 6,500 volumes;
and there are about 400 volumes of foreign agricultural publications.
The biography and the history of agriculture are represented,
and books on travel supplement the historical material.
Works on agricultural biology, agricultural chemistry, and agricultural
physics also support the main collection. Altogether
there are at the Virginia Polytechnic Institute 13,767 volumes
in this subject.

At Hampton Institute also there is a live collection on

agriculture. This is strong in its holdings, a fair proportion
being complete, of the publications of the state departments of
agriculture and of the agricultural experiment stations. Of these
the different titles number 260. The collection offers material
on practically all phases of the subject, and numbers altogether
4,794 volumes.

The large collection at the State Library numbers 15,563
volumes, of which about 4,500 are publications of state departments
of agriculture and of agricultural experiment stations and
about 8,700 volumes - practically all that have been issued, in
fact - of the publications of the United States Department of
Agriculture. The foreign publications represent England, Scotland,
France, Italy, and the Philippine Islands. All subjects
are represented, including soils and soil conservation.

At the University of Virginia itself there are 7,799 volumes
on agriculture, and two special libraries located elsewhere
supplement the general material. These two are the laboratory
libraries at the Blandy Experimental Farm in north-west
Virginia, which has several hundred books and over 4,000 pamphlets,
with special stress on genetics; and at the Seward Forest
in south-east Virginia, which has about 300 books and approximately
1,200 pamphlets on forestry. In addition to the supporting
material from the biological sciences, there is, at the University,
a collection of 1,986 volumes on rural social economics.

A smaller collection at the College of William and Mary
affords special interest through a considerable group of eighteenth
and nineteenth century works on gardening which were
known to and used by the colonial settlers and early planters
of America.

Section D. Home Economics.

The most extensive collection of books on home economics is
at Hampton Institute. This contains 674 volumes, including files,
none being complete, of American Cookery, the Journal of Home
Economics, and Practical Home Economics.

At the College of William and Mary there are 395 volumes on
this subject and sets of American Cookery, American Home, Forecast,
Home Economic News, the Journal of Home Economics, the
Parents Magazine, and Vogue. This library has a number of volumes
of early cook-books used in Virginia.

Among other collections in Virginia are those at the University
of Virginia (382 volumes), at the State Teachers College at
Fredericksburg (377 volumes), at the Richmond Public Library (375
volumes), and at the State Library (305 volumes).

Section E. Textiles.

The collections on textiles are still smaller. What is
apparently the largest is at the Virginia Polytechnic Institute,
and consists of seventy-nine volumes, including sets of Kunstseide,
Rayon, and the Textile World. At the Farmville State Teachers
College there are sixty-five volumes, at the State Library sixty-three
volumes including three periodicals), at the Fredericksburg
State Teachers College sixty volumes, and at the Richmond Public
Library forty-three volumes. Sweet Briar College has an historical
collection of sample textiles in its art department.