concentration of
these interests in so great a degree, in and around Boston, renders
the capital of the State an eligible site for such an undertaking.
Indeed, considering the peculiar genius of our busy population for
the Practical Arts, and marking their avidity in the study of
scientific facts and principles tending to explain or advance them,
we see a special and most striking fitness in the establishment of
such an Institution among them, and we gather a confident assurance
of its preeminent utility and success. Nor can we advert to the
intelligence which is so well known as guiding the large
munificence of our community, without taking encouragement in the
inception of the enterprise, and feeling the assurance, that
whatever is adapted to advance the industrial and educational
interests of the Commonwealth will receive from them the heartiest
sympathy and support.'

As we have stated, the plan proposed is to establish an Institution to
be devoted to the practical arts and sciences, to be called the
Massachusetts Institute of Technology, having the triple organization of
a Society of Arts, a Museum or Conservatory of Arts, and a School of
Industrial Science and Art. Under the first of these three
divisions--that of the Society of Arts--the Institute of Technology
would form itself into a department of investigation and
publication--devoting itself in every manner to collecting and rendering
readily available to the public all such information as can in any way
aid the interests of art and industry. If our manufacturers will reflect
an instant on the vast amount of knowledge relative to their specialties
extant in the world, which they have as individuals great difficulty in
procuring, and which would be useful, but which an Institute devoted to
the purpose could furnish without difficulty, they will at once
appreciate the good which may be done by it. For many years the only
comprehensive summaries of American Manufactures were a German work by
Fleischmann, _On the Branches of American Industry_, to which was
subsequently added Whitworth and Wallis's Report--drawn up for the
British government, and Freedley's Philadelphia Manufactures--to which
we should in justice add the invaluable series of Hunt's _Merchant's
Magazine_, and the Patent Office Reports. The community needs more,
however, than books can furnish. It requires the constant accumulati