The president who spent forty years turning Harvard into a modern university, from the Educators group of the Famous Americans series.

TECHNICAL SPECIFICATIONS

• Catalog Number: Scott #871

• Denomination: 3 cents (3¢)

• Date of Issue: March 28, 1940

• Printing Method: Rotary Press, Engraved (Intaglio)

• Perforation: 10½ × 11

• Color: Bright Red Violet

• Subject: Portrait of Charles W. Eliot, educator and president of Harvard University

• Format: Commemorative single, Famous Americans series (Educators)

CONDITION ANALYSIS (Seller-Assessed)

• Status: Used

• Grading: Fine

• Postmark: Black machine postmark of several wavy lines across the portrait. The Eliot portrait, text and denomination remain clearly readable.

• Obverse: The circular portrait, the lamp-of-knowledge emblem, the name panel, and the denomination are all sharp and identifiable.

• Reverse: No original gum present, as expected for a used stamp. The paper shows light toning, with no tears or thinning visible.

• Centering / Margins: The design is well framed, with slight rightward and downward shifts.

• Perforations: Intact on all four sides.

HISTORY

Charles William Eliot ran Harvard for forty years, from 1869 to 1909, and in that time he changed not only one university but the shape of American higher education. He inherited a small, rigid college where every student marched through the same fixed classical curriculum, and he left behind a modern research university that helped set the pattern others would follow.

His signature reform was the elective system. Eliot argued that students should be trusted to choose their own courses and follow their own interests, a radical idea at the time that broke the lockstep of required Latin, Greek, and mathematics. He also raised admission and graduation standards, strengthened the professional schools of law and medicine, and recruited serious scholars, transforming a finishing school for gentlemen into a place built around genuine inquiry.

Late in life he lent his name to the "Harvard Classics," the famous five-foot shelf of books he claimed could give a person a liberal education through fifteen minutes of daily reading. This stamp, issued March 28, 1940, in bright red violet, honors him within the Educators group of the Famous Americans series, recognizing a man who believed education should broaden minds rather than simply drill them.

STEVEN SAYS

Eliot led Harvard for forty years and basically invented the idea that college students should pick their own classes. Before him, everyone took the same fixed lineup. He is also the man behind the "five-foot shelf" of Harvard Classics. This is the Educators stamp, with the little lamp of knowledge in the design.