Royal Institute of Technology

The Royal Institute of Technology or Kungliga tekniska högskolan (KTH) is a university in Stockholm, Sweden. KTH was founded in 1827 and is Scandinavia's largest instituition of higher education in technology and one of the leading technical universities in Europe.

History

Tekniska Institutet

The origins of the Royal Institute of Technology go back to 1827, when the "Teknologiska Institutet" began to offer education in technological subjects with a strong professional touch. Its education programme was meant to be "popular as well as practical", as the industrialization of Sweden was getting under way; this called for a school that could meet the ever-increasing demand for engineers. Thus the educational focus of the new institute was set on applied technology, not on its scientific foundations.

Related Topics:
1827 - Industrialization of Sweden - Engineer

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Even then, this approach was an anything but an uncontroversial one. When viewing the early history of KTH, this clash between industrial and academic perspectives was in fact seen as a constant element of concern, as the desire to give scientific authority to the subject of technology collided with society´s demand for a practical approach to engineering in all its aspects.

Related Topics:
Industrial - Academic

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However, these two approaches proved to be compatible. Basic research and practical engineering did often cross-fertilize each other in those days also. An example of this was chemistry on an industrial scale; the scientific explanations of its processes were then arriving one by one. Another was electricity, originally a subject area of purely scientific interest, which was becoming something most useful in everyday life.

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Kungliga Tekniska Högskolan

Thus the new school of technology was able to maintain good relations with the industrial establishment without having to renounce the academic aspect. Changing its name to "Kungliga Tekniska Högskolan" in 1877 gave it increased academic status (in Sweden "högskola" is roughly synonymous with university). By and by, systematic research activities were undertaken, and the students at KTH were subjected to the requirement of completing a final degree paper. Formally, the final academic recognition of KTH as an establishment of higher learning arrived in 1927, when its right to confer the degree of Doctor of Technology was promulgated.

Related Topics:
1877 - 1927 - Doctor of Technology

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Ten years earlier, in 1917, KTH had moved into its own, specially erected buildings in the northern part of central Stockholm. This is still the core of KTH´s main campus, even if our activities today include a number of other campuses all over the Stockholm provincial area. The housing areas of these are now comprising some 250,000 square metres in all.

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KTH has always been in a state of growth. As the School of Mining was incorporated in KTH in 1867 the four established main branches of study became those of Mining Science, Mechanical Engineering, Chemical Technology & Engineering and Civil Engineering. Other subject areas have then been constantly added ? Building Architecture in 1877, Electrical Engineering in 1901, Naval Architecture in 1912, Surveying and Engineering Physics in 1932, Computer Science in 1983, and Industrial Economics in 1990.

Related Topics:
1867 - 1877 - 1912 - 1932 - 1983 - 1990

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Just as the great variety of subject areas have undergone changes, so have the attitudes in society towards engineers. This has obviously had effect on KTH, too. In the early 1900s the word "progress" was on everyone´s lips, "technology" and "modernity" were prestigious words, and the engineering profession was one of high repute, synonymous with a safe path towards personal and social success.

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Consequently a mass of students did compete for placements at KTH. In the early 1950s Sweden´s first nuclear reactor was installed in a cellar in our campus area, while on the other side of the street, higher up, Sweden´s very first TV station went on the air. In short, public confidence in the blessings of technology was of a high order.

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However, a counter-reaction was in the making, as in the 1960s and 1970s the negative effects of industrial production were brought into the open. The public debate became one of nuclear power or not, of ruthless exploitation of nature and of the increasingly menacing development of the war industry. As a result of this darkened world outlook, interest in technological professions dwindled.

Related Topics:
1960s - 1970s

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Even so, the battle for technology has been a winning one in the long run. Thanks to this very knowledge of their own negative effects, the fields of technological research and study have been favourably reshaped towards greater openness and a new sense of responsibility. This process has also been helped by the steady influx of new subject areas. With each one of these being added, and new technologies becoming part of Swedish everyday life, new crowds of KTH undergraduates have appeared. In the last ten-year period, such new subjects as biotechnology and IT have assumed strategic positions in modern social life as well as in KTH´s lecturing halls.

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R1

After the World War 2, and more specifically the two American nuclear weapons used on the two Japanese cities Hiroshima and Nagasaki, the Swedish military leadership recognized nuclear weapons as something that should be thoroughly investigated and researched to provide Sweden with knowledge on how to defend itself from a nuclear attack. At this time Sweden knew virtually nothing about nuclear physics, as all information about the American bombs and the research around them was kept strictly confidential by the United States. With the mission to "make something with neutrons", the Swedish team, with scientists like Rolf Maximilian Sievert, set out to research the subject and eventually build a nuclear reactor for testing.

Related Topics:
World War 2 - American - Nuclear weapons - Japanese - Hiroshima and Nagasaki - Nuclear physics - Rolf Maximilian Sievert - Nuclear reactor

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After a few years of basic research, they started building a 300 kW (later expanded to 1 MW) reactor, named "Reaktor 1", R1 for short, in a reactor hall 25 meters under the surface right underneath KTH. Today this might seem insane, to say the least, since approximately 40,000 people lived within a 1 km radius, but at the time the risks were deemed tolerable since it meant having the reactor very close to scientists of the Royal Swedish Academy of Engineering Sciences (Ingenjörsvetenskapsakademien).

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At 18:59, 13 July 1954, the reactor reached critical mass and Sweden's first sustained nuclear reaction was a fact. R1 was to be the main site for almost all Swedish nuclear research until 1970 when the reactor was finally decommissioned, mostly due to the increased awareness of the risks involved with operating a reactor in a densely populated area like Stockholm. The reactor is long gone, but the reactor hall remains to the amusement of many as they are told that they're standing next door to what used to be Sweden's first nuclear reactor. Close to the reactor hall is the restaurant Quantum.

Related Topics:
13 July - 1954 - Critical mass - 1970

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