From the free evening lectures at the Ohio Mechanics Institute to the current diversity of faculty, students and programs at the OMI College of Applied Science—a college of the University of Cincinnati since 1969—the initial vision remains clear. Technical education should be based upon scientific and philosophical principles and available to all.

In the first three decades of the nineteenth century, George Birkbeck, a professor of natural philosophy among the first Edinburgh reviewers, drove the development of mechanics institutes in London and Glasgow. Mechanics institutes then spread from England and Scotland, to the eastern seaboard of the United States, to Cincinnati.

The Ohio Mechanics Institute (OMI) was organized on November 20, 1828, joining four other American institutes in New York City, Philadelphia, Baltimore and Boston. The catalyst was John D. Craig who challenged Cincinnati leaders to “form an institution for the invaluable purpose of diffusing the light of science over every department of the useful arts and manufactures: for letting our ingenious artisans and mechanics see that the practice of their respective arts is capable of being derived from scientific principles; and from the great and immutable laws of nature.”

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