College students who attend Purdue University are known as the “Boilermakers.” But what does that mean?
The basketball team does not know the answer…
Purdue, founded in 1869, was established as a college of science, technology and agriculture in West Lafayette, Indiana. It has since grown to more than 50,000 total students with approximately 40,000 in pursuit of an undergraduate degree. Many of them are in school for engineering.
That is the primary explanation for the Boilermakers moniker. From 1891 to 1897, Purdue’s engineering department kept a steam locomotive to allow students the opportunity for hands-on research.
As a result of the university’s working-class approach to learning, its students (and the football team) were called things like “rail splitters,” “foundry molders,” and “blacksmiths” in the local newspapers. They were first called “the boiler makers” in 1981.
Purdue defeated Wabash College in 1891, 44–0. An account of the game in the Crawfordsville Daily Argus News of October 26, 1891, was headlined, “Slaughter of Innocents: Wabash Snowed Completely Under by the Burly Boiler Makers from Purdue”. Purdue became known as the Boilermakers the next year.
— Purdue University
The name stuck!
The school’s official logo, other than the P, is a steam train. Purdue Pete, the school’s official mascot, wears a hard hat and carries a large hammer reminiscent of the large mallets that boilermakers use to mold steel.
Today you learned!
Purdue’s basketball team also did not know the story behind the “Boilermakers” moniker. They recently gave it their best guess and only Trey Kaufman-Renn knew the answer. Well, he was the closest.
- Carson Barrett: “The train, laying down the train tracks.”
- Fletcher Loyer: “It has to do with trains.”
- Braden Smith: “To be honest, I have no clue. Someone who walks around with a hard helmet and a jackhammer.”
- Mason Gillis: “A Boilermaker is a train.”
- Lane Jones: “Somebody that works on trains.”
- Zach Edey: “It’s an engineer that makes trains… that work’s the train”
- Kaufman-Renn: : “I always think of a blacksmith, or somebody who works with Iron.”
Purdue Pete was confused as well.
They tried their best!