Showing posts with label local history. Show all posts
Showing posts with label local history. Show all posts
10.30.2012
11.09.2011
Hammer and Pick
In the early 1990s, I traveled to Germany to complete research begun years before during my year abroad as a doctoral graduate candidate. As a proud Montana Tech professor, I wore a traditional “School of Mines” lapel pin given to me one year at graduation by our Dean of Engineering, Pete Knudsen. It is in the form of the Tech shield, including our motto and emblem, the hammer and pick. These are the same crossed implements that adorn the cover page of The Technocrat.
The pin fascinated my German colleagues. As historians of science and technology, they knew immediately what “De Re Metallica” referred to, but the symbol of the crossed hammer and pick puzzled them. Germany had only recently reunited, and the emblem of the former East Germany had been a hammer and compass (see illustration), itself derived from the hammer and sickle emblem of the Soviet Union. Some of my German colleagues assumed that the Montana Tech emblem meant that my college was a communist institution!
10.24.2011
Origins of "De Re Metallica"
Ask most college students about “de re metallica” and they’ll probably mutter something about a heavy metal band. Montana Tech students, of course, know better. Tech’s motto, “de re metallica,” is a good fit for what began as The Montana School of Mines—a college that originally focused on degree programs such a Mining Engineering and Mineral Processing, and that today offers a diversity of programs including Technical Communication.
10.11.2010
Courthouse Turns 100
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| Photo: Aaron Briggs |
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