Page:Popular Science Monthly Volume 86.djvu/522

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518
THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY.

A View in one of the Thirty-eight Research Laboratories which have been finished and assigned in the New Building of the Mellon Institute.

The Mellon Institute has its own endowment and board of trustees, but is educationally an integral part of the University of Pittsburgh. It is the gift of A. W. Mellon and E. B. Mellon and has been erected at a cost of $350,000. The donors have also provided $40,000 a year for five years for maintenance. At the dedicatory exercises Dr. W. J. Holland, director of the Carnegie Museum and formerly chancellor of the university, said:

In a certain sense, Mr. Chancellor, this building is a memorial to Robert Kennedy Duncan. On one side of the entrance is a bronze slab inscribed with the name of Thomas Mellon; on the other side of the entrance is a bronze slab inscribed with the name of Robert Kennedy Duncan. But, Mr. Chancellor, this splendid edifice erected upon the campus of our university is more than a cenotaph. It not merely commemorates the names and careers of those of whom I have spoken, but it is intended to serve as the seat of advanced inquiries along scientific lines, which will tend to the promotion not merely of intellectual culture, but of industrial success, and that not merely in this great "workshop of the world," where it is located, but throughout the land. In creating this institution our dear friends have been actuated by a high and intelligent { purpose. Large experience in great industrial enterprises has taught them the importance of chemistry and physics in their application to the industrial arts, and they feel that, wonderful as has been the progress made within the last century, there are untold mysteries in nature which have not yet been revealed, but which, if uncovered, are capable of being-used for the welfare of mankind. And so they have created and are to-day placing in the custody of you, gentlemen of the board of trustees, this institution, which is capable of becoming, when wisely and intelligently administered, a mighty implement for the advancement of human welfare.

The new building of the Mellon Institute, as shown in the accompanying illustration, is a five-story and attic building. The basement contains seven rooms: the main storeroom, the boiler room the electric furnace room, a