In the early 1980s researchers at Carnegie Mellon's Field Robotics Center created robotic machines that cleaned up nuclear waste at Three Mile Island. Years later, other prototypes were used in the Chernobyl accident clean-up in Ukraine. The Senior Fence on the Cut was erected in 1923 so seniors could sit and watch the world go by. Three administrations were unable to remove it. The Fence receives more coats of paint each year than any building or canvas on campus.
Tradition dictates they do their painting only at night.
Daybreak reveals new messages, from happy birthday greetings to an ad for the next big party. In the early 1940s the silicone rubber in Silly Putty was discovered by a Dow Corning employee working on a research fellowship at Mellon Institute, now called Carnegie Mellon Research Institute. Earl Warrick was working with silicone compounds and came up with the strange, pliable material that stretches, bounces and absorbs printed impressions. In 1978 Herbert A. Simon, whose work challenged the economic theory of corporate decision-making and emphasized the psychological and practical limitations of managers, won the Nobel Prize for Economics. The project had been started more than 75 years before that, but only the Renaissance niche came close to completion.