The Navy’s first formal advanced education program, and predecessor of today’s Naval Postgraduate School, was the School of Marine Engineering at Annapolis, established by a Secretary of the Navy General Order in 1909.

The first civilian professor, Dr. Ralph Root, was hired in 1913. A mathematician and namesake of Root Hall, Prof. Root provided a first-hand account of the institution’s evolution from its origins to the first year of World War II in a paper titled, “Mathematics and Mechanics in the Postgraduate School at Annapolis,” which was presented in September 1942 and then published in the April 1943 issue of The American Mathematical Monthly.

You can read Dr. Root's published article in NPS Archive: Calhoun, here: https://calhoun.nps.edu/handle/10945/70498.

NPS Historical Highlights are brought to you by the Dudley Knox Library.

8 May 1953:  The NPS campus' student newspaper's top headline announces "a minor miracle" as NPS's then-new and unnamed watering hole gets a name ...and by unanimous decision.  "The opening date for THE TRIDENT is now firm," read the article in The Postgrad. "Each judge headed his list with the same selection....THE TRIDENT."

The NPS community was invited to "calibrate" it's collective "whistle" for the offical wetting down, scheduled for the evening of May 15, when  the school's superintendant, RADM Frederick Moosbrugger, himself an NPS alumnus, cut the ribbon to welcome visitors for the Trident's first Happy Hour.

The author of the winning name, Lt. Richard Wenzlik, and his "charming wife", Marge, were treated to a prizewinning dinner.  

You can read about the Trident's opening evening in NPS Archive: Calhoun. See The Postgrad's issue for May 22, 1953 at https://calhoun.nps.edu/handle/10945/48604

NPS Historical Highlights are brought to you by the Dudley Knox Library.
 

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