100 Years ago (1909) On Oct. 11, Peninsular Railway Company launched trolley service from Palo Alto to the campus. The line entered from El Camino east of Palm Drive, angling across the arboretum to what is now Galvez Street. A half-mile down, it made a sharp turn toward the terminus behind the Quad. Fare was 5 cents; 2,900 passengers rode the first day.
Economist Thorstein Veblen, author of The Theory of the Leisure Class (1899), resigned after three years on the faculty. In letters to President David Starr Jordan and others, Veblen's estranged wife claimed that he withheld financial support. She also spread rumors of indiscretions. Although the shy Veblen was an unlikely womanizer, he was, in fact, involved with the woman who would become his second wife, and that was enough to seal his Stanford career. Veblen later helped found the New School for Social Research (now the New School) in New York. He retired to Menlo Park and died in 1929.
75 YEARS AGO (1934) The Stanford Associates was formed to help raise money for the University. At its founding, Stanford was the wealthiest university in the United States, but by the 1930s the low return on investments dropped it to 20th place. The Associates later encouraged the formation of a professional fund-raising staff, news and publications offices, and other support.
50 YEARS AGO (1959) Stanford Medical Center, a $21.5 million complex designed by architect Edward Durell Stone, was dedicated. Relocating of the School of Medicine from San Francisco to campus put clinicians in closer proximity to researchers and faculty from other disciplines.
Families began moving into the completed first phase of Escondido Village, near the intersection of Escondido Road and Stanford Avenue. The 250 apartments covered the site of the 1920s-era Palo Alto Airport.
Dr. Arthur Kornberg won a Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine for work done at Washington University in St. Louis synthesizing DNA. He had recently joined Stanford as head of biochemistry.
25 YEARS AGO (1984) Stanford-in-England reopened with a strengthened academic program in Oxford. Stanford's British program started at Harlaxton Manor in 1966, then moved to Cliveden.
Miles of trenches were dug for the Stanford University Network (SUNet), a labyrinth of cables to link almost all campus computers. SUNet is an expansion and extension of Ethernet, a commercial system developed by Xerox. In 1988, Stanford's system was connected directly to the government-sponsored national network now known as the Internet, allowing high-speed communication around the world.
KAREN BARTHOLOMEW, ’71, writes this column on behalf of the Stanford Historical Society (histsoc.stanford.edu).
