F.I.T.

In the post about coyotes (on August 3rd) I made a snippy reference to the Fashion Institute of Technology.

I'm about to get even snippier.

How did they come up with that name? F.I.T. was founded in 1944. (The California Institute of Technology was founded in 1891, MIT in 1861.) Did whoever came up with the name Fashion Institute of Technology think that perhaps its graduates would be considered to be on an intellectual par with CIT and MIT alumni?

And what, pray tell, does fashion have to do with technology?

Or did they choose that name because its acronym would mesh cutely with a fashion theme (as in, good clothes fit well)?

And wasn't 1944 -- in the middle of World War II -- a strange time to be opening up a college devoted to something as frivolous as fashion?

What does a graduate of FIT say when meeting a graduate of MIT?

"So...What did you major in at MIT?"

"Oh, I studied electrical engineering."

"Hmm. I majored in quantum physics myself."