Ellen Brown wrote this paper as a graduate student, in history, at Virginia Tech, twenty years ago. She was just beginning to delve into the childhood and education of John Apperson, Jr. In digging through the archives in the university library, she found information about how the land grant institution, Virginia
Agricultural and Mechanical College, got started, including the courses being taught, the presidents and faculty, and the names of hundreds of students, especially during the 1890’s when Hull Apperson, and his younger brother, John were both enrolled there. It seems that most students were highly motivated to learn about the latest technological advances in the field of electrical engineering, and the Apperson
brothers were no exception. In fact they both ended up leaving Virginia in 1900, to seek employment in Schenectady, New York, at the General Electric Company.
“Getting Ready for the Electrical Age: Virginia Tech, General Electric,
President McBryde, and the Scientists in the 1890s”
by Ellen A. Brown
(International Social Science Review, Volume 77, 2002;
republished in High Beam Research, Inc., 2007.)