This was originally published in December 2013, as part of our Item of the Month series.
Our festive treat from the Archives is a tongue-in-cheek take on the fairytale, ‘Cinderella,’ as published in the Royal Technical College Magazine for January 1913. Strathclyde’s antecedent institution, the Royal Technical College of Glasgow (1912-1956), was popularly referred to as ‘the Tech’ and renowned worldwide for the quality of its scientific and technical instruction. Practical scientific knowledge features prominently in the College students’ version of this classic story, where it is deployed to great comic effect. Cinderella’s two ugly sisters are here recast as students of the Tech, studying ‘maths and baking’ (the College had a thriving School of Bakery – see our March 2011 feature for details). Instead of having to cook, clean and keep house, poor Cinderella, being ‘as clever as she was good,’ is made to do all of her sisters’ maths exercises!
On the night of the Students’ Union dance, our heroine dresses her sisters in their finery and sees them off. Left alone to watch ‘the delta signs and the sums to infinity in the flames of the kitchen fire,’ she expresses a forlorn wish to go and dance with the Union President. Cinders’ Fairy Godmother duly appears, and, by waving her magic wand over a bottle of hydrogen sulphide (H2S - a colourless gas smelling of rotten eggs), some empty cans and a broken alarm clock, conjures up ‘a beautiful new taxi’ to whisk Cinders off to the dance. Instead of providing her with a dainty pair of glass slippers, Cinders’ Fairy Godmother hands her one of the sisters’ maths textbooks to serve as a dance programme, for no student could be admitted to the hall without a programme.
Having danced not only with the Union President, but with all the other student presidents too, Cinderella’s ‘regular swell time’ is curtailed when the clock strikes twelve, and she dashes off, leaving behind half of the maths textbook in the hands of the smitten ‘Nicest President.’ With no glass slipper to be tried on, the President conceives a more ingenious way of tracking down his beloved: he announces that he will marry the girl who can solve a test exercise set by the Professor of Mathematics. Will there be a happy ending? Read on to find out!
Anne Cameron, Archives Assistant