John Fritz was a friend of Asa Packer, an original Lehigh trustee and a steel industry pioneer who loved Lehigh so much that, at the age of 87, he funded, designed and supervised the construction of the research laboratory that bears his name. The original lab had state-of-the-art machines, including an 800,000-pound Riehle universal testing machine, that allowed for testing of many structural components, including sections of the gates of the Panama Canal.