Thomas Roy Hart was born in Monroe, North Carolina on April 29th, 1890. He graduated from North Carolina College of Agriculture and Mechanic Arts with a bachelor's degree in Engineering in 1913. He worked for various cotton mills in Monroe and Burlington, North Carolina, as well as in Illinois and Massachusetts. During a fourteen month military service overseas, Hart attended American Expeditionary Forces University in Beaune, France. He returned to North Carolina to obtain a Textiles Engineering degree in 1920, and a Master of Science in Textile Manufacturing in 1924. He joined the faculty at North Carolina State College in 1919 and eventually became of Head of the Department of Weaving and Designing. In 1948 he became the Director of Instruction and held this position until his death on January 11th, 1956. Hart was noted for his large number of publications, including a history of the School of Textiles, The School of Textiles, N. C. State College: Its Past and Present published in 1951, Cloth Calculations, which Hart co-authored with former Textiles Dean Thomas Nelson, and numerous scholarly journal articles.