A window
on the Caltech of yore
“In
1941, a bottle of soda cost 5¢, the deluxe kitchen made use of such
new miracle materials as linoleum, and a homemaker could please her finicky
family with the quintessence of haute cuisine—the frankfurter. Europeans,
meanwhile, had weightier issues on their minds as anxiety mounted concerning
Hitler’s plans to invade Britain. In March of that year, Life Magazine
published a photographic essay on Caltech.”
So begins
the introduction to a new Caltech Archives Web page—a high-tech tribute
to the Institute of 60 years ago that combines the original Life article
and photos with additional commentary from today’s standpoint. The
idea for the site came from Caltech Board of Trustees chairman Ben Rosen
’54, who donated a copy of the March 17, 1941, issue to the Archives,
with enthusiastic support from President
David Baltimore.
The essay
paints an idyllic portrait of Caltech’s cutting-edge research intersecting
with its educational and student life components, juxtaposing images of
atom smashers and wind tunnel experiments with students taking exams and
sleeping on the Athenaeum’s open-air porch. “Only towards the
end,” writes the Archives staff, “does the article foreshadow
the coming transformation of this pacific, intellectual campus into a
super-efficient war machine.”
The Web page
was written and edited by Archives staff members Judith Goodstein, university
archivist; Shelley Erwin, associate archivist; and Kevin Knox, historian;
and designed by Glenn Smith ’96. It can be accessed on the Archives
site at http://archives.caltech.edu/life_article/.
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