Coleman Sellers Biography 1827–1907 Page 8
COLEMAN SELLERS THE PROFESSOR AND HIS MEMBERSHIPS
Among other societies to which Dr. Sellers belongs may be mentioned the American Society of Civil Engineers, the Society of Naval Architects and Marine Engineers, the British Institution of Civil Engineers, and the British Institution of Mechanical Engineers, the Geneva Society of Arts, the Pennsylvania Historical Society, and the venerable American Philosophical Society, founded by Benjamin Franklin. His membership in the great British engineering societies was, without solicitation, tendered him in 1884 on the nomination of a number of the most eminent men of science in England. During the Centennial Exhibition in 1876 he served as one of the special judges for final settlement of difficult or disputed questions of award. For his well-known scientific attainments he was decorated by King Oscar of Norway and Sweden with the order of St. Olaf, and in 1899 the University of Pennsylvania conferred on him the honorary degree of Doctor of Science.
Dr. Sellers paid his first visit to Europe in 1884, when, as professor of mechanics and member of the board of managers of the Franklin Institute, he acted as delegate from that society to the ter-centenary of the University of Edinburgh. During a stay of several months in England he visited the large works of Sir William Armstrong and Sir Joseph Whitworth under the most favourable auspices, finding open to him also the doors of any establishment he wished to see, even those that were noted as being generally closed to all the world. In many of these he found some of his own inventions, and that designs made by him as engineer for William Sellers & Co. had been copied and were in use. His trip was extended through France, Germany, Sweden, and
Norway, in which last-mentioned countries he met with a particularly hearty welcome.
In 1886 he again crossed the ocean, spending the summer in the Scottish Highlands, and upon his return to America ill health obliged him to give up his former duties. He, therefore, resigned his position as engineer of William Sellers & Co., Inc., and subsequently took up active practice as a consulting engineer, for which he had been prepared by an experience of more than forty years as designer and manufacturer.
When it became known that he had entered upon this independent professional work the writer, as president of Stevens Institute of Technology, at Hoboken, New Jersey, immediately urged that he should lecture before the senior class of that institution. This resulted in the establishment of a Chair of Engineering Practice, with Dr. Sellers as a non-resident member of the faculty. This chair was founded with the intention of giving the students a better knowledge of the use to which they could apply in actual practice the technical knowledge they were obtaining, and further, to bring them into close touch with the customs and requirements of practical engineering. The lectures delivered at Stevens during a number of years were attended not only by the senior class, but also by members of the faculty, who received from Dr. Sellers’ extended experience many hints to aid them in their instruction. In 1887 he received from Stevens Institute the honorary degree of Doctor of Engineering. [continue]