The search for clean cash

Abstract

One hundred and fifty years ago this week, on 10 April 1861, the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) received its charter. Although hardly the oldest institution of higher learning in the Anglo-American world — Harvard University was already well into its third century by then, and the British universities of Cambridge and Oxford were each on the cusp of their eighth — MIT quickly became a trendsetter. Founder William Barton Rogers built a curriculum around the school's motto Mens et manus: mind and hand. He and his faculty members incorporated laboratory instruction into the most elementary undergraduate courses and fostered close ties between basic science and the practical arts — pedagogical innovations that quickly inspired many imitators.