Calendar: 1931-1932 Page 30

28 SKETCH OF THE HISTORY OF KING'S COLLEGE and Studies After the closing of the School of Oriental Studies at the Imperial Institute University College and King's College continued to carry on between them the teaching of Oriental Languages until January 1917 when both teaching and staff were transferred to the new School of Oriental Studies London Institution established by Royal Charter in June 1916 In the year 1880 school of Practical Art was opened and Professorship of Practical Fine Art was founded and partly endowed by grant from the City and Guilds Institute for Tech- nical Education This department also came to an end owing to the competition of the Polytechnics In the same year by the aid of an endowment from the same body Metallurgical School and Laboratory was opened In 1881-the year in which the College celebrated its jubilee- the first proposals were made for the creation of Department for the Higher Education of Women to be situated at South Kensington It was opened in 1885 as the Ladies' Department in 1892 it became the Women's Department in 1908 it was incorporated in the University of London under the title of University of London King's College for Women For History see page 33 As result of these developments King's College became one of the largest if not quite the largest of educational establish- ments in the country Working through long period when the interest in education and the public encouragement of it was very slight the Council of King's College in spite of very inadequate means played an important part in the education of London and supplied many deficiencies which could not in those days have been met in other ways The total number of students who worked at the College between 1903 and 1908 was larger than at the present time but it must be remembered that the greater number of those students were not doing work of University standard and that if we take this point alone into consideration the College has made steady progress since its incorporation with the University During the 80 years in which it was responsible for the govern- ment of the whole College the Council often acted as pioneer and was distinguished for the readiness with which it adopted new developments The Engineering School is one of the oldest in the United Kingdom King's College was the first institution in London to develop evening teaching of an advanced type The Wheatstone Laboratory of Physics is older than any students' laboratory of the kind in England or Germany The laboratories of Comparative Pathology and Bacteriology and the William Siemens laboratory of Electrical Engineering were among the first in these subjects to be started in London The last event in the history of the College before its incorporation with the University was the initiation of the course for Home Science and Economics in the Women's Department at South Kensington-again the first University Department of its kind in this country