Captain Blake, Superintendent of the U.S. Naval Academy, wrote Assistant Secretary of the Navy Fox regarding the curriculum of the Academy: “To make the Academy a school for engineers would require considerable changes in the Academic Course. Descriptive geometry, which was struck of it sometime since, should be restored, for it is needed in the study and comprehension of machines. There should also be an extension of the course of Analytical Geometry and Calculus, by means of which many of the formulas relating to steam, and the steam engine, are derived, and the course of drawing, which now embraces mechanical drawing to some degree, should be extended. We should also have more chemistry.” Through the years the Naval Academy curriculum has been reviewed and revised to meet the demands of new technology and new dimensions in sea power.
General View of the Naval Academy, Annapolis, Maryland, a wood engraving after a drawing by W. R. Miller (Miller, William Rickarby, 1818-1893), published March 1853 in Illustrated News, New York, New York.