I ‘found’ something ‘cool’

Visitors to the Archives often remark that we have a lot of cool stuff.  I agree!  There are periods of time, however, when I have to deal with more mundane tasks and the ‘cool stuff’ is very much in my periphery.  I was having a rather blaisé day this week selecting photographs of individuals to [...]

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a walking status symbol

The cane, a fashion accessory popular in the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, was also a college status symbol.  Canes or walking sticks were once commonly “worn” by men during this time period.  At many colleges, freshmen had to earn the right to carry a cane on campus.  Cane rushes or cane contests involved a [...]

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back when mandolins were cool

Yes, that’s right — mandolins were all the rage from about 1894 to 1924.  Mandolin clubs popped up at high schools, colleges and cities all over the country.  The club at RPI evolved out of the Banjo and Guitar Club in 1892 –  it was called the Banjo, Guitar and Mandolin Club. When mandolins outnumbered [...]

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former club & curious artifact

This topic combines two of my archival curiosities — RPI artifacts and former RPI clubs.  The artifact is a molded plastic triangle with circuit symbols in relief and a black inset triangle with the gold letters L/R/C.  The former club is LCR. This is a description of LCR found in the 1948 Transit: LCR was [...]

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memorabilia

I was recently asked a question about RPI memorabilia so I thought I would share an example of what we have in our collection. We receive donations from alums, their families and other generous people.  We also regularly troll Ebay looking for RPI related material to add to our collections. (BTW, we NEVER sell anything [...]

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