A thermo-electric cooling module inspired Ilan Moyer and Gregory Schroll — the idea that putting electricity into the module would quickly heat or cool something started them brainstorming, which led to their idea for a can-chiller. The chiller is designed to quickly cool down a can of soda. The MIT Hobby Shop gave Moyer and Schroll, third-year mechanical engineering students, the opportunity, tools, and space to turn that inspiration into a functioning prototype — and win MIT’s Luis de Florez Award for creativity and ingenuity.

MIT and its students created the Hobby Shop in 1937 as the kind of place on campus where members could take an idea — one that was not a course assignment or a lab project — and turn it into a working invention. Gregory Schroll keeps a list on his computer of such ideas; he calls them “inventions to be,” and the Hobby Shop is where he turns that list into reality.

“I’ve had the opportunity to explore a lot of ideas at the Hobby Shop. Seeing what I can do helps me think of things I want to do, and come up with more ideas,” says Schroll.

Unlike other machine shops and laboratories on MIT’s campus, the Hobby Shop is not affiliated with any one department, and is open to anyone at the Institute. On any given day, students might be crafting a new piece of equipment for an experiment in their lab, creating a new product, or tinkering with an interesting idea for fun.

“The Hobby Shop is for students who enjoy designing and building, prototyping their inventions, and making whatever they want. It fosters creativity and develops design skills, as well as craft and machining skills,” says Ken Stone, director of the shop.

Last year, over 450 term memberships to the Hobby Shop were purchased, and since 1994, the shop has had over 2,700 different members, including:

• almost 1,400 undergraduates;
• over 800 graduate students;
• 40 faculty; and
• numerous staff and alumni.

Beyond fostering creativity and an inclusive, intentional community of shared interests and individuals helping each other, the Hobby Shop provides students with tools and space to:

• build storage lockers for families living in a Boston shelter;
• craft a hand-held piece of equipment to provide ophthalmological treatment to people in developing countries;
• create a specialized bioreactor to facilitate stem cell research;
• design and build stereo speakers, and then teach others to do the same; or
• turn pieces of wood into an electric guitar or a kayak.

A learning center

The centerpiece in the office of Alex Slocum, professor of mechanical engineering and director of the Experimental Study Group, is a large wood-and-granite conference table he built himself in the shop. Slocum first joined the Hobby Shop when he was an undergraduate at the Institute. He considers the shop a learning center — a place where a student can continue working on an academic project in the evenings after department shops close, a place to experiment with design, or a place to build his or her own tables and book shelves.

“I’ve learned so much from the Hobby Shop. For every 10 inventions that don’t work, what you learn from them goes into the one that does work,” says Slocum.

The power to create

The equipment in the Hobby Shop gives members the ability to create anything they want, and anything they can imagine.

“The Hobby Shop gives you an avenue to explore things you learn in class, just because you want to, not because it’s part of an assignment,” says Moyer, one of the inventors of the can-chiller.

Zach Bjornson came to MIT with some woodworking experience, and he had occasional thoughts about building his own piano or harpsichord. When he discovered the Hobby Shop, Bjornson decided to build a replica of a 1756 harpsichord that is on display in Boston’s Museum of Fine Arts. An MIT alumnus had actually drawn up detailed plans of the original instrument as part of its restoration in the 1970s. Bjornson purchased those plans and, by the end of his first year at the Institute, had completed about half of the wood working. This left the remaining wood work, gold leaf work, and the painting of a fresco on the lid and sides for his upper-class years at the Institute. The experience has developed his wood working skills, and taught him about music.

“In one class, my professor asked if anyone knew how the movement of a harpsichord worked. I was the first to answer, in great detail,” Bjornson says.

At its simplest, MIT’s Hobby Shop is reality testing, says Stone, the director. “People can have a great idea, but there’s a long way between a great idea that can work, and making something that actually does work,” he says.