Illinois Institute of Technology

The Illinois Institute of Technology, often called Illinois Tech or IIT, is a private research university in Chicago, Illinois. Its history begins in 1890, when the Chicago minister Frank Gunsaulus preached his Million Dollar Sermon about a school where students would learn by doing, and the meat packer Philip Armour gave a million dollars to found the Armour Institute, which opened in 1893 with courses in engineering, chemistry, architecture and library science. The Lewis Institute, set up in 1895 from the estate of Allen Cleveland Lewis, offered liberal arts, science and engineering to men and women. The two merged in 1940 to form the present university, and the German architect Ludwig Mies van der Rohe, who headed architecture there, designed its modernist campus. The Institute of Design joined in 1949, Chicago-Kent College of Law in 1969 and the Midwest College of Engineering in 1986. Engineers such as the magnetic recording pioneer Marvin Camras studied and worked in this tradition.