Ceramic Engineering, 1924

NC State College main campus looking north, c. 1920s (UA 023.005.112)

The steady growth of NC State College, particularly with an influx of students following World War I, prompted a reorganization of the College in the early 1920s.  NC State President Wallace Carl Riddick called upon an outside consultant, George Zook, a specialist in higher education in the United States Bureau of Education, to advise on a plan for restructuring the school.  The Zook report recommended the formation of four schools: engineering, agriculture, general science, and social science and business administration.  Each school would be led by a dean and would integrate research, teaching, and extension work into its activities.  This new structure led to a new era of growth for NC State College that “would align it with a new age of technology emerging in the 1920s.”[1]

The School of Engineering was formed in May 28, 1923, and Wallace Riddick transitioned from his role as President of NC State College to become the first dean of the School of Engineering. The School consisted of the Electrical Engineering Department, Civil Engineering Department, Physics Department, Textile Engineering, and Mechanical Engineering. During Riddick's leadership, the school grew to include twelve departments, and the Engineering Experiment Station was established. Riddick organized the North Carolina Society of Engineering and the Raleigh Engineers Club, and remained Dean of Engineering until he retired in 1937.[2]

NC State Student Chapter of the American Ceramic Society, 1926 (UA 023.030.060)

A student chapter of the American Ceramic Society (ACS) was started in or before 1925 at North Carolina State College for the stated reasons of discussing and furthering the ceramic arts and sciences. The American Ceramic Society (ACS) was originally organized in 1898 by members on the National Brick Manufacturers Associtation in Pennsylvania, as a cooperative, volunteer society, whose members worked together to discover advances in ceramics technologies. The N.C. State student chapter remained active through 1987.

The Engineering Experiment Station was founded in 1923 as a result of a provision for financing by the North Carolina General Assembly. H.B. Shaw became its first director. Shaw’s research focused on highways and automobiles, and he was best known for his Engineering Experiment Station bulletin “Highway Grades and Motor Vehicle Costs,” which demonstrated that a car at constant speed on undulating grades uses approximately the same amount of fuel as a vehicle on level ground at the same speed.[3]

The Engineering Experiment Station was established as the research agency to support extension work and applied research for the School of Engineering, and was intended to address engineering issues of local state and regional concern.[4]  A council composed of the Director, H.B. Shaw, and nine engineering faculty members was formed to control the policies and efforts of the station.[5] The purpose of the station was to produce and distribute research as a foundation for engineering education, and as an aid in the development of “the State, of its industries, of its engineering works, and particularly in the economic utilization of its resources.”[6]

The station supported the work of all departments in the School of Engineering, including research in Ceramic Engineering with an investigation into “Tests of North Carolina Brick and Tile” in the year leading up to the creation of a dedicated department in this area (UA 050.002.003, Engineering Experiment Station: NC State Course Catalog, 1923-1924). According to George Zook, the experiment station was “another very important channel through which the college can more effectively serve the State and extend and deepen its influence with the people.”[7]

During the first 23 years of the Experiment Station, 1923-1946, 15 of the 31 total publications of the station were based on research in the Ceramic Engineering Department, indicating the close relationship between the station and the department, and the department’s contribution to research in ceramics during these early years.[8]  

A.F. Greaves-Walker (UA 023.024)

The Department of Ceramic Engineering was established by A.F. Greaves-Walker in 1924, under the leadership of Dr. E.C. Brooks, president of NC State College. The department was the first of its kind in the American South, and was "established primarily to promote the ceramic industries of North Carolina and to thus provide plants in which its graduates may find employment,” as well as to “train natives of the State for the ceramic industries as they developed.”[9]  Dr. Greaves-Walker, a native of the U.K., spent 20 years working in industry as a mining and ceramic engineer and administrator before resigning as vice president and general manager of Stevens, Inc., in Atlanta, GA, to lead the new Ceramic Engineering Department at NC State.[10] In his first years leading Ceramic Engineering, Dr. Greaves-Walker focused primarily on making a survey of the ceramic mineral deposits in North Carolina and in supporting “the few infant industries that were attempting to use these materials.”[11] As a result of this work, investment in ceramic plants increased in the years 1924-1928 from approximately $1 million to over $5 million, with the most notable development in the feldspar industry.[12] Enrollment in the program increased from 5 students in 1924 to 50 students in 1930. Graduates of the department during these early years found employment primarily in the areas of “structural clay products, glass, refractories, insulating materials, gypsum, cement, white wares, iron and steel enameled ware, and sanitary ware.”[13]

Within a year of Greaves-Walker’s arrival at NC State, he also became the founding head of the Department of Mining Engineering in 1925. The department was established "primarily to train 'miners' for the particular mining problems of the state and the south," who will "be particularly well trained for geological survey work and the development departments of southern railroads." [look at course catalog for professors and courses offered] Two years later, in 1927, the department was dissolved and courses were dispersed between the Department of Ceramic Engineering and the new Department of Geology. [again, describe faculty and courses]

Jasper L. Stuckey (UA 023.024)

 J.L. Stuckey was founding head of the Department of Geology and remained head of the department in 1935 when the department was renamed to Geological Engineering.  He remained head of the department until 1954 when Geological Engineering merged with the new Department of Mineral Industries. Stuckey was also deeply involved with the creation of the Minerals Research Laboratory in Asheville, NC, and served as State Geologist of North Carolina while he was a professor at NC State. 

Following a dip in enrollment in the early 1930s, “due no doubt to the fact that the ceramic industries of the State became practically ‘dead’ after the ‘crash’ in 1929,” the Department of Ceramic Engineering continued to grow in enrollment, increasing from 30 to 72 students over the period 1934-1941.[14]

In the early 1940s, research in the Department of Ceramic Engineering focused largely on North Carolina pyrophillite resources, and during the World War II years the department conducted “a great deal of research for the Federal government on steatite radio and radar insulators and dielectrics.”[15]

A.F. Greaves-Walker took a leave of absence from NC State in during World War II to serve as Chief of the Metals and Minerals Branch of the Office of Production Research and Development, where his research contributed to development of materials in the war effort.  In 1944, Dr. Greaves-Walker was elected to Mining and Metallurgical Society of America.  He was the first ceramic engineer to be honored by membership in the society which was composed of the top-ranking mining engineers, metallurgists, and geologists in the country.[16] Dr. Greaves-Walker went on to serve as president of every ceramic organization, both professional and technical, on the American continent over the course of his career, including the American Ceramic Society, the Institute of Ceramic Engineers, Keramos, and the Canadian Ceramics Society.[17]

A.F. Greaves-Walker (UA 023.024)

In 1945, A.F. Greaves-Walker published a 6-part series of bulletins through the Engineering Experiment Station, in an effort to highlight the need for developing and investing in North Carolina minerals. The bulletins advocated investing efforts to develop and retain these resources locally, particularly during the “anticipated post-war building boom” following World War II.[18]  Greaves-Walker described the locations of deposits and enumerate the possible uses of various minerals, “with the hope that North Carolinians may be interested in developing new mineral industries during the post-war period." He pointed out that North Carolinians "have usually permitted these remarkable deposits either to be rapidly depleted by foreign corporations, which shipped the minerals to other states for processing into manufactured products, or remain undeveloped,” and asserted:

“It is not yet too late to cut down on the export of these minerals by following in the footsteps of the textile industry in establishing plants in close proximity to the raw materials. Richly endowed as it is, North Carolina can become one of the great ceramic producing centers of the nation. Not only are the raw materials available, but ceramic engineers trained in North Carolina and experienced in the great industrial plants of the North are now ready and anxious to return to their home State and assist in the development of its mineral resources.”

The bulletins elucidated the locations and possible uses of minerals such as shales and clays, which were anticipated to be in great demand during a post-war building boom as brick and tile; olivine serpentine, and spodumene, which offered industrial opportunity as concentrates of lithium chemicals and greases; and barite, rutile-illmenite, and beryl, which provided a wide array of opportunities for economic development through the production of cement needed for the construction of highways and public buildings.[19]  One bulletin claimed that Kaolin, a clay mineral interest to North Carolinians was used by Cherokee Indians for painting their bodies, and was later discovered by English potter Josiah Wedgwood, who shippied it to England and used it to create Wedgwood pottery.[20]

In 1946, Dr. Greaves-Walker stepped down as head of the Department of Ceramic Engineering to become director of ceramic research at the University of Florida. Over the years of Dr. Greaves-Walker’s leadership at NC State, he had successfully “built his department to a top rank in the nation,” leaving the Ceramic Engineering department as one of twelve accredited departments of its kind in the United States.[21] Shortly after his departure the Department of Ceramic Engineering established the Doctor of Philosophy degree in Ceramic Engineering in 1948, with its first class of graduate students enrolling in the 1949-1950 academic year.[22]

Ceramic Engineering student John Monzingo demonstrating use of hydraulic press, c. 1940s. (UA 023.012.037)

In the years after World War II, the department reported that graduates of Ceramic Engineering were increasingly obtaining employment in the Southeast and in North Carolina in particular. This pattern contrasted with pre-war trends, when most graduates found work outside of North Carolina and frequently went North for work.  In 1950 the department asserted that the majority of graduates launched their careers in the state or region, “even though the graduating classes have been considerably larger than in pre-war,” adding that “it is particularly gratifying to the staff that the industry of the South is more and more looking toward State College for ceramic engineers.”[23]

Ceramic research laboratory in Riddick Hall, 1951 (UA 023.012)

W.W. Austin noted that the state of North Carolina began “at the bottom” of the ceramics industry, “with a few small kilns” in the 1920s.[24] By 1952, supported by the work of the Ceramics Engineering Department and the Department of Engineering Research at NC State College, North Carolina could boast “26 modern tunnel kilns, making it the fourth largest brick producing state in the nation, manufacturing more clay products than the combined efforts of over 20 states.”[25]