The IIHR Archive houses many photographs that portray IIHR, its research, and its researchers since the 1920s. The photo gallery here offers a sample of this rich resource—click on any photo below to start the slideshow, which includes captions providing more information.
The University’s original Hydraulics Lab, which opened in 1920, was a mere 22-by-22-foot box perched above a flume (see channel on right) fed by the Iowa River.
In 1924, the Hydraulics Lab demonstrated its ability to measure the Mississippi River’s flow at the Keokuk Dam spillways, initiating a history of Mississippi research that continues to the present day.
In the 1920s, students would test current meters (which measure water’s flow) by taking a trolley out over the Iowa River and dropping the meters into the rushing water below.
Floyd Nagler, IIHR’s founder and first director, traveled Iowa’s backroads to perform field investigations of the state’s rivers and mill sites.
Floyd Nagler (center) was an active proponent of Iowa’s water power. When out in the field, he sought discarded turbines, which he brought to the Hydraulics Lab to display for students.
The original small Hydraulics Lab was replaced in 1928 by a larger multistoried structure, which was expanded in 1932 and is seen here in the 1930s from Riverside Drive to the north.
Moving heavy research equipment into the new Hydraulics Lab proved a task even for the cranes of the day.
The completion of a much-expanded Hydraulics Lab (shown here in 1932) supported IIHR’s growing research program.
In the 1930s, IIHR helped create a nine-foot-deep navigation channel in the Upper Mississippi River by building and testing small-scale models of the channel’s locks and dams before they were constructed.
The Hydraulics Laboratory has always been known as a tidy research site; note here the well-managed conditions under which students of years past calibrated water’s movement over a weir.
Since the 1920s, IIHR researchers have studied the flow of water in pipes. This early student was observing falling water—a subject still addressed today in IIHR’s designs of dropshafts for city storm sewers.
Hunter Rouse, cited as “the father of modern hydraulics” and winner of many prestigious awards, served as director of IIHR from 1944–65.
Hunter Rouse designed this 1941 flume that taught basic principles while simultaneously demonstrating their applications.
IIHR’s researchers have always depended heavily on the mechanical shop (shown here in the early 1940s) and its workers to build, test, and operate precise experimental models.
IIHR obtained its first computer in 1967 (a bulky IBM 1801, upper left), and a few years later applied it to small-scale-model research that plotted water’s flow and alluvial bed conditions in the Missouri River—a project that until then would have been unimaginable.
Louis Landweber (second from right) joined IIHR in the mid-1950s and initiated a major ship hydrodynamics program. This 1960s ship model was the precursor to today’s highly sophisticated research models.
IIHR’s original ship-model towing tank (shown here in 1992), in the basement of Stanley Hydraulics Lab, is still in use today. In 2010, it was joined by an even larger wave basin for testing water’s flow around free-moving ship models.
Last modified on May 9th, 2011
Posted on March 10th, 2011
