Q 01/05

MIT is located in which city, across the Charles River from Boston?

A) Cambridge

B) Somerville

C) Newton

D) Brookline

Answer · why

A) Cambridge

The campus stretches for about a mile along the river; the Harvard Bridge links it to Boston's Back Bay.

Q 02/05

MIT's charter was signed in April of which year, two days before the Civil War began?

A) 1866

B) 1861

C) 1876

D) 1901

Answer · why

B) 1861

The war delayed everything, and the first classes were not held until 1865, in Boston's Mercantile Building.

Q 03/05

MIT's founder William Barton Rogers was a scientist in which field?

A) chemistry

B) astronomy

C) geology

D) medicine

Answer · why

C) geology

He had come to Boston from the University of Virginia and wanted a school modelled on the German polytechnics.

Q 04/05

By what informal name was MIT known in its early decades in the Back Bay?

A) Back Bay Poly

B) the Conservatory

C) Rogers College

D) Boston Tech

Answer · why

D) Boston Tech

The 1859 proposal for a 'Conservatory of Art and Science' on the same filled land had failed.

Q 05/05

MIT was funded in its early years under which 1862 federal law?

A) the Morrill Land-Grant Act

B) the Homestead Act

C) the Pacific Railway Act

D) the National Banking Act

Answer · why

A) the Morrill Land-Grant Act

The same act created the Massachusetts Agricultural College, now UMass Amherst.