A prolific author and great pioneer in mechanical engineering education, Robert Thurston established the first mechanical laboratory in 1875, at Stevens Institute of Technology, Hoboken, New Jersey, where he was professor of mechanical engineering (having first established the curriculum there in 1871). That laboratory was the first of record in the United States to combine research, instruction, and commercial work, and it was particularly well suited to the field of materials, friction, and standardization of methods for testing internal combustion and steam engines and boilers. In 1875, he pioneered the field of alloys, developing the three-coordinate solid diagram for testing iron, steel, and other metals. While he was widely published in the areas of materials, thermodynamics, steam engines and boilers, friction and energetics, his article on the "History of the Growth of the Steam Engines" (first published in 1878) became a classic.

Called a "live wire," he possessed "in remarkable degree the capacity for rapid and intensive work," according Dumas Malone's biographical dictionary (1936). More ...