Marcus Mansfield never expected to be a member of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology's first graduating class in 1868. Only a few years earlier, as a Union solder, he'd endured daily torture in a Confederate prison camp. At the war's end he returns to New England to a job in an iron works where he is recruited by William Barton Rogers, the founder of MIT. In addition to students with traditional educational backgrounds, Rogers is looking for students with innate abilities to apply scientific principles to practical arts. He finds this in Marcus, whose mechanical modifications and inventions cause him to stand out among his factory peers. MIT's motto is the Latin Mens et Manus or "Mind and Hands" and Rogers can see that Marcus embodies this principle. When a series of calamities rocks the peaceful
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