Mechanics’ institute

Mechanics’ institute, a voluntary organization common in Britain and the United States between 1820 and 1860 for educating manual workers. Ideally such an institute was to have a library, a museum, a laboratory, public lectures about applied science, and courses in various skills, but few had all of these. Mechanics of different trades were to learn from each other—a denial of guild exclusiveness—and to add to human knowledge.

A forerunner of such institutes was the Birmingham Brotherly Society, founded in England in 1796. In Glasgow, Scotland, George Birkbeck collected information about different trades and offered lectures at the Andersonian University (also called Anderson’s University) from 1800 to 1804. He then moved to London, where in 1809 he helped to found the London Institute for the Diffusion of Science, Medicine, and the Arts, while Andrew Ure continued his work in Glasgow. Timothy Claxton founded the Mechanical Institution in London in 1817; it offered lecture-discussions for three years, until Claxton left London in 1820. The New York Mechanic and Scientific Institution, founded in 1822, was the first of many short-lived efforts in New York.

The Glasgow Mechanics’ Institute—considered a model because of its library, museum, and lecture program—was founded in 1823. The same year, Birkbeck helped organize the London Mechanics’ Institute. The Franklin Institute of the State of Pennsylvania for the Promotion of the Mechanic Arts was founded in Philadelphia in 1824, and the Maryland Institute for the Promotion of the Mechanic Arts was established in Baltimore in 1825. Timothy Claxton, who had moved to Boston, founded the Boston Mechanics’ Institute in 1826, but its reliance on lectures doomed it. Claxton tried again, founding the Boston Mechanics’ Lyceum in 1831. In Cincinnati the Ohio Mechanics’ Institute opened in 1829. In France, Baron Charles Dupin founded several institutes before 1826, beginning at La Rochelle and Nevers.

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From 1830 to 1860 hundreds of institutes were founded in the United States and Britain. Britain’s Society for the Diffusion of Useful Knowledge (founded 1825) provided a central organization unknown in the United States. But many institutes were short-lived, and some of the more successful were taken over by nonmechanics with money, leisure, and the desire to hear lectures. Rules requiring mechanic majorities on governing boards were disregarded. The Franklin Institute early became a centre for advanced research in applied science, publishing reports that few mechanics could understand. The Ohio Mechanics’ Institute became a school, offering courses and certificates in skills. The Maryland Institute fell dormant after its building burned in 1835 but was revived in 1847. Some institutes became lyceums; others, public libraries; still others, exhibiting agencies.

After 1860 mechanics’ institutes largely disappeared. But the Franklin Institute has remained an important research centre; the Ohio Mechanics’ Institute was an independent school until 1969, when it became part of the University of Cincinnati (O.M.I. College of Applied Science). The London Mechanics’ Institute was incorporated into the University of London as Birkbeck College in 1926, and the Manchester Mechanics’ Institute became the Manchester College of Science and Technology in 1956.