Robert H. Richards papers

Of interest in the collection are materials documenting instruction in mining and metallurgy at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology during the beginning years of the Institute. Instruction in the mining course consisted of lectures, laboratory work, and a summer school. Diaries record information about the summer school mining trips taken under the direction of Robert Richards. Some of the diaries are written by Richards, other diaries were kept by students for the school. The diary that Richards kept in 1873 offers a more personal view of the trip. In his diary Richards recorded notes for courses he was teaching as well as his equipment packing list for the trip. One can also follow the progress of the trip via his notes about student assignments at mine sites and sketches of machinery. In these beginning years of MIT, there was still much discussion about methods of instruction. Undergraduates studying mining and economic geology were expected to spend a portion of their vacation investigating mining operations and submit a report on what they had learned. The summer excursion for mining students became a well-established part of the curriculum with trips to mining camps across the United States and Mexico an annual venture for many years.

Robert Richards recorded his thoughts in the form of quick notes or observations rather than elaborate prose. Two years after writing his 1873 trip diary, Robert Richards married Ellen Swallow, the first female graduate of MIT (SB 1873). The diary contains a few intriguing glimpses into this personal side of his life. One is a list of dates and places on the trip from which he wrote to her. On another page are notes about educating men and women together, with arguments for and against. He credits one of the "for" arguments to "Swallow."

The collection also contains Robert Richards’s laboratory and teaching notes and a bound volume of course notes, including engravings and printed diagrams used by Richards in a mining engineering class in fall 1880. Student work, which may be related to a 4th year class “Memoirs, laboratory reports” listed in the Institute’s course catalog, can be found in the set of laboratory reports produced by students.

A photograph album of mining company sites and processes appears to have been made during one of the summer trips, and as it is stamped “Mining Laboratory” to have been used as a teaching tool.

Robert Richards’s dual role as a faculty member and alumnus is demonstrated in the reports of the faculty and the Committee of Eighteen on the proposed alliance with Harvard University in 1905, which was opposed by MIT alumni.