Mystery Image #8

Bravo to our blog readers.  All of the mystery images that have been posted thus far have been identified!  So let’s move on to the next image.
This must be a very serious scholar (you’ve seen pictures of Da Vinci haven’t you??).  Can you put a name with this face?

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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 [...]

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Funky Names

I’m looking forward to a three-day holiday weekend and some summer fun so it’s hard to concentrate on RPI history today! I’ve been working on an inventory of faculty/alumni files and doing some organization in the collection. I frequently use information in this collection to answer questions about RPI people. [...]

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Mystery Image #5 – create a caption

This photo really intrigues me! In all of my RPI history travels, which includes extensive research for exhibits on student clubs and student traditions, I haven’t found an explanation for this image. I hope I stumble across something someday that will help me identify this curiously dressed group of men! I’m [...]

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this week in May

Finals week is coming to an end and from my vantage point (limited as it may be), it has been very quiet on campus this week. It definitely feels like the semester is winding down. On the job I often live in the past and today I wondered how very different [...]

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Mystery Image #3

Ladies and gentlemen, it’s time for another round of Mystery Image. There is still a thick folder of unidentified photographs on my desk so let’s get to it! My best guess about this prof is that he is/was in the School of Engineering. The nicely written notes on the blackboard are Greek to [...]

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The Tute Screw

Every RPI student and alum has invariably heard the term ‘Tute Screw; often used metaphorically and also embodied as an actual object. No one knows who coined the term or how long it has been in use, but the object itself has a documented origin. In the Fall of 1949, Sigma Phi Epsilon [...]

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Looks familiar…

This photograph has been kicking around my desk for some time. The house looked familiar, but I couldn’t quite place it. I showed it to my colleagues and they also remembered seeing it before — but where?
Recently, I was searching for some information in issues of The Polytechnic from 1931 and this mystery [...]

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Mystery Image #2

Who is this corn cob pipe smoking, bow tie wearing professor at the typewriter?

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Nerdy Cheer?

Here’s a question about RPI’s alma mater — did the lyrics include the first few digits of pi? The answer is no, but there was a cheer that included it along with some other math lingo. Do you know it?

E to the X – DY -DX
E to the X – DX
cosine, secant, tangent, sine,
3 – [...]

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