The first laboratory to be established at the institute was that of chemistry, and this leads us to speak first of the department of chemistry. The laboratory of general chemistry was opened in 1876 under the direction of Professors Eliot[B] and Storer, and is believed to be the first laboratory where instruction was given in general chemistry to classes of considerable size. From small beginnings, this department has rapidly grown under the able direction of such men as James M. Crafts, (since 1897 president of the Institute), William Ripley Nichols, Charles H. Wing, Lewis M. Norton and Thomas M. Drown, until now the instructing force consists of five professors, thirteen instructors and six assistants, a total teaching force of twenty-four, in addition to seven or eight lecturers on chemical subjects. The department occupies the two upper floors in the Walker Building, together with about half of one floor in the Henry L. Pierce Building, devoted to industrial chemistry. The laboratories, which are said to be the largest and best equipped in the United States, are known as the Kidder chemical laboratories, having been so named in recognition of the generosity of the late Jerome S. Kidder. They comprise twenty-two separate laboratories, three lecture-rooms, a reading-room and library, two balance-rooms, offices and supply-rooms, making forty rooms in all, with accommodation for seven hundred students. Besides the large laboratories for general chemistry and analytical chemistry, there are smaller laboratories for volumetric analysis, for organic chemistry, for sanitary chemistry with special reference to the analysis of water and air, for oil and gas analysis, for the optical and chemical examination of sugars, starches, etc., for the determination of molecular weights, and so on. In the industrial laboratories, the students are taught how to manufacture chemicals with due regard to economy of material, space and time. There is also a special laboratory for textile coloring, with printing machines and all the necessary equipment of baths, dryers, etc., for experimental dyeing and coloring. In this laboratory the preparation and use of coloring matters are taught with the object of fitting young men for positions in dye works. A course of lectures in textile coloring was first introduced in 1888 and the laboratory course in 1889. [B] Now President Eliot of Harvard.