1964 Yearbook | Center Named in Memory of Glenn M. Mueller
 "It's my hope that this center will serve to create balance among intellectual pursuit, social responsibility, physical health, and emotional well being." - Nancy Mueller
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Humorist Dave Barry had a column (summer '96) on how abdominal muscles are pretty useless, despite how society today considers them a sign of beauty on both men and women. Yes, that is precisely the reason. Abs don't develop from any useful work. A "six-pack" indicates someone who has time and determination to spend hours in the gym.
By the way, biologist Isaac Asimov claimed that humans evolved from single-cell organisms to multicellular ones through the sponge family, the worm family, and finally through the starfish family to vertebrates, animals with backbones. The familiar earthworm has a series of rings, because it grows by duplicating again and again the entire middle section of its body. Our abs are a vestige of this heritage. (I always knew my Great Uncle Pete was a worm!)
The concept of weight-lifting goes back to Greek mythology. There is a legend of a young man who lift a newborn calf. He kept this up as the calf grew and gained weight until eventually he was strong enough to lift the adult bovine. I believe a full-grown cow weighs in the neighborhood of a ton. We know that there is an upper limit to how strong one can developed. This story might be the first instance of "throwing the bull." However, the idea was known that increment increases in working a muscle will strengthen it.
All during the entire course of human history up until the last century, muscles even on men were considered a sign of the working class. No gentleman would try to bulk up his arms and shoulders. In fact, quite the opposite - enormous girth was a sign of prosperity. Athletic women were considered unlady-like. Also, people were covered head to toe in clothing and a bare ankle on a woman was shocking. (Before autos, streets were covered with horse manure, which bred swarms of biting horse flies and other insects.) Any bulging muscles would be hidden. The predecessors to silicone was the famous Victorian bustle. Swathed in yards of heavy fabric, hoop skirts helped emphasized how tight the waist was pinched by a corset. (Tight corsets prevented women from getting a deep breath and caused them to faint at the slightest exertion.)
People did not purposely expose their skin to sunlight (and thus to view). Women desired a "peaches and cream" complexion, carrying a parasol during daylight. "Gentlemen" stayed indoors. The working class toiled under the sun, getting a deep tan on the back of their neck, as summed in the term "redneck."
After WWI, as autos replaced horses, women's skirts rose above the ankle for the first time since the reign of Charlemagne. The Industrial Revolution provided machinery for farming, earth-moving, etc. while the number of office workers indoors increased. Tanned skin became desirable, a sign of a wealthy leisure class (particularly as Hollywood and sunny California in general began to attract the fashion-setters).
On the other hand, most people got lots of exercise in their daily lives before all the marvels of our labor-saving devices.
Although the general population didn't purposely work out, athletes did. According to Ellington Darden (The Nautilus Handbook For Young Athletes), Victorian athletes used sandbags, Indian clubs, and gymnastic bars to "get in shape".
The Y was originally created not as the family fitness center it has evolved into today, but as a way to keep young men from falling into the temptations of urban life by offering them a Christian alternative, with rooms to stay overnight on a short term basis, reading rooms, and moral teachings. In particular, Troy's red light district located next to the railroad along 6th Avenue was particularly active, attracting clientele from as far away as New Haven. Not only was there a main branch of the YMCA on First Street, but there was one built just opposite Union Station solely for the railroad workers.
In the 1960's, businessman Arthur Jones began to work out with weights. However as a frequent business traveler, he couldn't take his weights with him. He also realized some other limitations with barbells. He found that the weaker smaller muscles tired out first, preventing proper working of the larger muscles. In '68, he experimented with crude machines which he built in his garage in Florida. He used the idea of cams or spiral pulleys, which changed the resistance during the course of the movement to best isolate each muscle group. The first machines used cams with spokes, which reminded him of the multichambered spiral shell of a nautilus, hence the name. In 1970, Jones established Nautilus Sports/Medical Industries. As of 1984, there were over 3,000 Nautilus Fitness Centers (each of which had to have at least 12 Nautilus machines to use the name), plus numerous other machines in training rooms, colleges, high schools and professional sports teams. Since then, other machines such as Cybex and Paramount have been developed to help isolate and work individual muscle groups.
The effect of this has been noticeable. The "hot" bodies shown in movies half a century ago would be laughed at in today's rippling "cut" or "buff" images. Even Barry pointed out that George Reeves, in his Superman suit in the 1950's TV series, had a noticeable potbelly, and not the "six-pack" required for any actor playing that role today.
With the explosion of cheap clothing made available by the Industrial Revolution, it is hard today to tell social status. Most people can't tell a Paris original from a K-Mart's rip-off, and thus the effect of wearing the best clothes is lost on average viewer. Thus to some extent, the body itself is becoming the fashion statement - tan, muscles, hair length and color, tattoos, and pierced body parts.
Thus the connection between being fit and what was considered an ideal body shape is of fairly recent times. There are people today who take working out and in particular, losing weight, to unhealthy extremes, because they suffer from a poor body image. This is in the same vein that Victorian ladies laced their corsets up so tight they displaced their internal organs.
The other thing to consider is that fitness is a science still in its infancy. If it seems like every couple of months they changed their ideas, they do! Back when I was in school, gym teachers told you NOT to drink water when you exercised on a hot day, as they claimed it would give you cramps. Instead they gave out salt tablets. (It's a wonder any of us survived.)
Amelia Jenks Bloomer (1818-1894) was a social reformer. She invented a loose pair of trousers for women gathered at the knee, which were named after her ("bloomers"). These allowed women to exercise.
The next step forward came indirectly from the iron industry. After the Civil War, the first Bessemer plant was introduced (in Troy, by the way), which made steel available in quantity. In the 1880's, advances in the machine industry allowed the cutting of steel gears, which made the standard bicycle possible. (The "ordinary" with its massive front wheel, was because the pedals had to be directly attached to the wheel since they couldn't make cast iron gears strong enough. The wheel was so big in order to get enough speed to keep the bicycle up.)
In 1890's, there was a short-lived but INTENSE fad for bicycles. Remember there were no autos at this point. This was a revolution in personal transportation. EVERYONE cycled. (A horse and carriage was far too expensive and impractical for all but the rich.) In particular, women gained freedom in being able to move about on their own without having to have a carriage driver accompany them. It also allowed women to be more physical.
On the biggest advances was the passage of Title 20 c. early '70's, which said that schools had to give equal support to both men's and women's sports. A whole generation of women athletes have benefited.
In 1886, a gymnasium was opened near the Main building. The building was small by latter standards, but extremely ornate, designed in the prevailing Queen Anne style with a turreted round tower.
In 1904, the building and the Winslow chemical laboratory burned within a month of each. Winslow as rebuilt and served the school for almost a century more. Today it is the home of the Junior Museum on 8th Street. The Main building was a lost and RPI even considered moving out of Troy, Instead, the school purchased the 10 acre estate of Walter Phelps Warren just up the hill. On the site of the Main building, a broad ornamental granite staircase was built, called the Approach. The original gym was taken over the RPI Players in 1929 and torn down in 1966.
The class of 1887, which would have been among the first classes to used this new facility, nonetheless raised the money for a new gym further up the hill, which opened in 1912, on the 25th anniversary of their graduation. This new building was named after the class (1887, not 1987). The old gym became a clubhouse and later the Playhouse.
In the 19th century, there was tremendous rivalry between the classes, specifically the freshmen and sophomores each year. Over the years, this violent hazing formalized into the "Cane Rush", conducted under the Grand Marshall. The cane was stout hickey cane, which the two sides battled for control. By the 1880's, the Cane Rush was held on a distant playing field (RPI not having a playing field at that time or even much of a campus), where admission was charged. The combatants stripped down and greased up, for a wild melee which lasted over 20 minutes. The Victory went to the side with the most hands on the cane. Legend has it that one year it was held on the island between Green Island and Troy. A student grabbed the cane and ran up onto the Green Island bridge and into Troy, followed by all the naked participants through the streets of downtown. This ended the ritual.
The Armory was built for the National Guard during WWI, but not completed until the early '20's. At that time, the campus ended at 15th Street. When I came here to RPI in '68, what is now the visitor parking lot was filled with army tanks and surrounded by chain link fencing. There was no roadway leading in from the east side. What is now a walkway from the set of wooden steps on "freshmen hill" to the 15th Street bridge was an unpaved path through tall grass, affectionately nicknamed the "Ho Chi Minh Trail". Eventually RPI built a new armory south of town, and traded buildings with the National Guard.
During WWII, the Navy took over RPI to crank out engineers in a crash-course of just months. After the War, they gave RPI the Fieldhouse (legend has it that is was originally a blimp hanger but the official story it was a surplus warehouse.)
At that time in the early '70's, I'm not sure if there were any free weights for students (other than athletes) to use. There was one Universal machine in a tiny room in the basement of the '87 Gym. And the only across the board requirement for graduation was that you passed a swimming test. (Somehow I managed to doggy-pad my way to a degree.)
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To contact us:
Phone: 276-2874
Fax: 276-2817
Email: mugrap@rpi.edu
