collegealum314

Actually, you have it backwards. Near the turn of the century (1900), there was serious concern among ivy league alumni that their undergrad curriculum was outdated. In the 1800's, their curriculum consisted solely of latin and other humanities. This was the impetus for schools like MIT that started up at the end of the 1800's. It's probably not a coincidence this happened right after the Industrial Revolution. Harvard and the other ivies successfully revamped their curriculum to produce graduates that were equipped to work and interact in the modern world. Part of Harvard's push to reinvent itself was the unsuccessful attempt to purchase MIT in the early 1900's. The MIT alumni voted against it.

MIT was already well-respected in the early 1900's, but you're correct that it really made its name in World War II with the development of radar. In order for MIT to successfully do this, however, they needed to have a stellar faculty already in place. This could not have happened overnight. Also, just off the top of my head, they attracted some awesome people before the 40's. Vannevar Bush was an MIT alumnus and was one of the giants of electrical engineering--he was there from the 20's until he retired. The application of mathematical logic to electrical circuits was someone's master's thesis at MIT--obviously a gigantic contribution. In the late 30's, they had both Feynman (one of the top few physicists of the 20th century) and Robert Burns Woodward as undergrads. For those that aren't familiar, Robert Burns Woodward is probably the most talented synthetic chemist in the 20th century, winning the Nobel Prize. The Woodward-Hoffman Rules, a very fundamental tenet you learn in organic chem today, also won the Nobel Prize for Hoffman shortly after Woodward died. So he narrowly missed winning the Nobel a second time.

So, in summary, while MIT became world famous in the 40's, I think it's fair to say it was not some insignificant trade school before then.