Montgomery College

Montgomery College (MC) is a public community college in Montgomery County, Maryland.

The school was founded in 1946 as Montgomery Junior College. Four years later, it absorbed the 57-year-old Bliss Electrical School, which became the junior college's electrical program.

The college has three campuses, the largest of which is in Rockville. Its other campuses are in Takoma Park/Silver Spring and Germantown. Its off-campus sites include the Business Training Center in Gaithersburg and Westfield South in Wheaton, which are operated by the college's Workforce Development and Continuing Education Division.

The Bliss School of Electricity was a private, for-profit institution which claimed to be the oldest school teaching electricity in the world. Established in 1893 and named after its founder Louis D. Bliss, its first class was held on October 15, 1893, in a single room on the third floor of the Warder Building at Ninth and F streets NW in Washington, D.C. It started as a night class with 26 students, including Thomas E. Robertson, who would later go on to be the United States Commissioner of Patents. The capital investment in the school was $400, representing an advance payment of $20 each from 20 men. During the eight-month session of 1894–1895, about 75 men enrolled and paid $50 of tuition each. In 1895, Charles Francis Jenkins, of motion picture and television fame, enrolled as a student. The school later moved to 219 G Street NW in Washington, D.C.

W. B. Connelly, a 1904 graduate of Bliss, worked for the General Electric Company at Schenectady, N.Y., where he led the inspection of some two miles of switchboards for the Panama Canal. Before going to General Electric, Connelly taught at Bliss; his student Skipwith B. Cole would later become dean of the school's faculty.

In July 1908, the Bliss Electrical School bought the four-story North Takoma Hotel and its 4.5 acres of land from Thomas H. Pickford. Located on Takoma Avenue between New York and Chicago avenues, the hotel had originally been built by Benjamin F. Gilbert in 1892. Bliss intended to remodel the four-story hotel building into space for classes.

Eight weeks after classes were first held in the new building, the school building burned to the ground around 2:45 a.m. on November 6, 1908. The fire forced almost 200 students in the second floor dormitory to escape the building. As there were no fire escapes, the students climbed out of windows using ropes intended for that purpose. The fire was caused by gas leak in the first-floor kitchen. At the time, Takoma Park did not have a fire station; the closest one was located nearly two miles away in Brightwood.

Afterwards, many Takoma Park residents allowed the students to stay in their homes, many of whom had come from elsewhere in the U.S., Canada, Mexico, Costa Rica, Ecuador, Brazil, and Japan. The City of Takoma allowed the Bliss School to use Takoma Hall for classes temporarily, as did Takoma Park Presbyterian Church. A new two-story building of brick and reinforced concrete was built at the same site, opening for classes in September 1909. A bungalow across the street was acquired to be used as a dining room.