Thayer School is named for Sylvanus Thayer, an alumnus of Dartmouth in the class of 1807. Thayer was known as "the father of West Point" for his sixteen-year superintendency of the United States Military Academy at West Point, New York, where he developed an extensive engineering curriculum unlike any other in the United States at the time. After thirty years of professional service in the Army Corps of Engineers, Thayer endowed Dartmouth College with $40,000 in 1867 (and increased the gift to $70,000 by 1871) for the establishment of a school of engineering initially called the Thayer School of Civil Engineering.