100 YEARS AGO (1904)
Norman Dole, Class of 1904, set the first world record by a Stanford athlete when he cleared the bar in pole vault at 12 feet, 8/25 inches using a carved spruce pole during a Stanford-Cal track meet. His daughter, Janet Dole Tuffli, ’38, later donated his trophy to the University.
Nearly the entire student body gathered May 5 at the home of Jane Stanford to welcome her home from a year in Asia, Australia and the Middle East. They listened to her describe visits with Stanford alumni in Japan and India, and ate refreshments served on long tables under the trees.
75 YEARS AGO (1929)
In May, the campus celebrated the 50th anniversary of the development of “moving pictures” at the old stock farm. In the 1870s, Leland Stanford had hired photographer Eadweard Muybridge to test his theory that at one point in its fastest gait, a trotter has all four feet off the ground. Muybridge used 24 cameras with electrically controlled shutters tripped by the horse, and devised a machine to project the images in quick succession. Identical plaques commemorating the achievement were installed in Memorial Court and at the horse stables, where two old employees of the farm took part in the ceremony. Charley Worcester, Gov. Stanford’s coachman, was present. Other events included a screening of San Francisco Before the Fire and other early films; a campus assembly with Louis B. Mayer of Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer as one of three speakers; and an exhibition at the Art Gallery with one of the original cameras.
The Carnegie Institution’s Division of Plant Biology was dedicated in August on five acres Stanford leased to Carnegie for its $75,000 laboratory and glasshouse.
50 YEARS AGO (1954)
Results of the student body’s spring elections: Peter Bing was elected president and Dianne Goldman was elected vice president. Goldman, ’55, in photo at right, is U.S. Sen. Dianne Feinstein of California. Bing, ’55, serves on the Stanford Board of Trustees.
Stanford Museum, closed since 1945, reopened after an extensive refurbishing of the building and reorganization of the collections. Classics professor Hazel D. Hansen, ’20, MA ’21, PhD ’26, and her students restored many Greek ceramics from broken shards tossed in boxes after the 1906 earthquake. Museum officials put on permanent display the gold spike that marked completion in 1869 of the first transcontinental railroad. An armed guard delivered the ceremonial spike from a Wells Fargo storage vault.
25 YEARS AGO (1979)
History professor Don E. Fehrenbacher won the Pulitzer Prize in history for The Dred Scott Case: Its Significance in American Law and Politics. Fehrenbacher told interviewers that he intended to write a short book on the infamous 1857 U.S. Supreme Court decision, “but it grew out of all proportion: a history of the Dred Scott case became the basis for writing a history of the slavery controversy.” The Oxford University Press book ended up 741 pages.
Karen Bartholomew, ’71, writes this column on behalf of the Stanford Historical Society (histsoc.stanford.edu).
