Norwegian Institute of Technology

History

The decision to establish a Norwegian national college of technology was made by the Norwegian parliament, the Storting, in 1900, after years of heated debate on where the institution should be located; many representatives felt that the capital Kristiania was self-evident as the place for this nationally important seat of learning. However, NTH was located in the geographically central city of Trondhjem, based on an emerging policy of decentralisation as well as the city's existing and highly esteemed technical college (Trondhjems Tekniske Læreanstalt).

Five academical departments were originally present in the parliament's resolution of 31 May 1900:

• Architecture and city planning
• Civil engineering
• Mechanical engineering (a. General and b. Naval, i.e. ship and ship engine construction)
• Electrical engineering
• Chemistry (a. General and b. Electro-chemistry)

This article is in its early stages; more will be written as time permits. This will at least entail: 1) early years, pre-WWII history, incl Samfundet; 2) NTH during WWII; 3) possibly some info on each decade until '96, incl SINTEF, RUNIT, etc; and 4) end of independent NTH

Notable alumni

• Jens Glad Balchen, cybernetics engr., professor
• Ivar Giaever, mechanical engr., physicist, 1973 Nobel laureate
• Lars Monrad Krohn, electronics engr., industrialist
• Lars Onsager, chemist, 1968 Nobel laureate
• Rolf Skaar, cybernetics engr., industrialist
• Vebjørn Tandberg, electronics engr., industrialist
• Leif Tronstad, O.B.E., chemist, planner and organiser of WWII's Operation Gunnerside
• John Ugelstad, chemist, known for his pioneering work on monodisperse polymer beads

Commercial impact

The following companies, or divisions of international companies, have resulted from NTH/SINTEF research (either purely NTH-based, or in cooperation with industry):

• Atmel Norway (the Atmel AVR RISC microcontroller family)
• ErgoRunit AS (offering outsourcing services in system planning/administration and accounting)
• FAST Search & Transfer (inter/intranet search engines; developers of alltheweb.com)
• NordIC VLSI ASA (ASIC design, SoCs, RF/mixed signal hybrid IC's)
• Schlumberger Information Solutions Trondheim, formerly VoxelVision AS (3D visualization)
• Sun Microsystems Trondheim, formerly ClustRa Systems (high-availability, real-time database technology)
• Systems in Motion AS (3D visualization)

Referenced By