Institution of Mechanical Engineers

The Institution of Mechanical Engineers (IMechE) is the British engineering society concerned with mechanical engineering.

Overview

Vision statement: "Improving the World through Engineering". Its Purpose is "To lead and promote professional engineering"

In 1818 the Institution of Civil Engineers was founded. At that time the word "civil" was used to distinguish them from Military engineers and included all the fields of engineering, not just construction as it does today. The Institution of Mechanical Engineers was founded on January 27 1847 in the Queen's Hotel next to Curzon Street railway station in Birmingham by the railway pioneer George Stephenson and others^[1]. The Institution of Electrical Engineers was founded later in 1871.^[2]

The head office is located at 1 Birdcage Walk, Westminster, London, SW1H 9JJ

The beginning

The events that lead to the formation of the IMechE began in the early autumn of 1846. A discussion between six or seven men, not all of whom were engineers, ended with the decision to try and gain support for an institution for "mechanics and engineers". Exactly where this discussion took place is open to debate. At the opening of the present headquarters in Birdcage Walk, London in 1899 a commemorative pamphlet was issued to members stating that the meeting took place in a house in Cecil Street, Manchester. Namely the house of a Charles Beyer, the manager of Sharp Brothers' locomotive works. Although Beyer was very much involved in the formation of the IMechE, it is more likely that the meeting was no more than a conversation among friends.

More probably, the venue of the discussion that led to the first meeting was the Lickey Incline near Bromsgrove on the Bristol and Birmingham railway. James McConnell was until 1846, locomotive superintendent of this line, known earlier as the Birmingham and Gloucester railway. It appears that McConnell had invited several engineers to view locomotive trials at Lickey, where there is a 1 in 37 gradient. It remains one of the steepest parts of the British railway network today.

In one account of the event a shower of rain sent the party running for cover. They found shelter in a trackside platelayers' hut, and it was in this hut that the discussion may have turned to the formation of an institution for mechanical engineers. It is quite probably that both the rain and the hut are a myth. It is more likely that the engineers returned to McConnell's house at Blackwell, less than half a mile away where the discussion began.

George Stephenson

More than a decade later Samuel Smiles, in his biography of George Stephenson suggested that the IMechE was formed out of a sense of justifiable rage. Smiles wrote that the engineers present at the Lickey Incline were angry that Stephenson, the most famous mechanical engineer of the age had been refused membership to the Institution of Civil Engineers, unless he sent in "a probationary essay as proof of his capacity as an engineer". According to Smiles, Stephenson declined to submit to this indignity and as such the other engineers decided to form their own institution, that would not only include Stephenson, but put him at their head.

It took over a century to expose Smiles's account as a complete myth, or at least an exaggeration. In the 1950s after the centenary of the IMechE had made the story public, engineers at the Institution of Civil Engineers checked their records and found that although there had been a definite coolness between Stephenson and some prominent members of the ICE (Stephenson retained a distaste for London based consulting engineers compared to "practical Northerners") there is no evidence that he ever applied for membership or that if he did, it was refused. The story appears to have been invented by Smiles some years after Stephenson's death perhaps as an illustration of the hardships faced by the early engineering establishment or to provide some drama to his work.

As well as McConnel and Bayer, Richard Peacock, superintendent of the Manchester and Sheffied railway and later a member of parliament was present at the meeting at Lickey along with George Selby and Archibald Slate from the Birmingham tube company and Charles Geach, a Birmingham Banker. The result of the meeting was a letter, that was sent to all the prominent engineers across Britain. It read:

"To enable Mechanics and Engineers engaged in the different Manufactories, Railways and other Establishments in the Kingdom, to meet and correspond, and by mutual interchange of the ideas respecting improvements in the various branches of Mechanical Science to increase their knowledge, and give an impulse to inventions likely to be useful to the world. We hope to have the pleasure of seeing you at a Meeting of Promoters of the above on Wednesday 7th October at 2pm at the Queens Hotel, Birmingham"

The letter was signed by McConnell, Bayer and Slate and also by Edward Humphreys of the firm Rennie's in London. Although not present at the meeting the use of his name gave the endorsement of a London Engineer, to add to the Birmingham and Manchester men, and Rennie's was an illustrious name to attach to the new institution.

On the 7th of October the meeting was held. The preliminaries appear not to have taken too long. The four signatories of the letter, plus Peacock, William Buckle from Boulton and Watt, John Edward Clift and Edward Cowper were elected to form the committee and draft the rules, with McConnell as Chairman and Slate as honorary Secretary. The meeting however was followed by a dinner. The list of toasts, beginning with Queen Victoria and the Prince consort and including a toast to the Institution of Civil Engineers, to the memory of James Watt, to George Stephenson and his son Robert, to Brunel and the health of McConnell and Slate as well as others suggest that the evening slid into genial, less than sober, sentimentality.^[3]

Presidents

As of 2006, there has been 122 presidents of the Institution, who since 1922 have been elected annually for one year. The first president was George Stephenson, followed by his son Robert. Joseph Whitworth, John Penn and William Armstrong are the only persons to have served two terms. Pamela Liversidge in 1997-98 was the first – and so far only – woman president.

Past presidents include:

See also

• Institution of Civil Engineers
• Institution of Electrical Engineers
• James Watt International Medal
• Chartered Engineer

References

1. ^ Cragg, Roger (1997). Civil Engineering Heritage: Wales and West Central England: Wales and West Central England, 2nd Edition. Thomas Telford, 194. ISBN 0727725769. 
2. ^ Robert H. Parsons. "A History of the Institution of Mechanical Engineers, 1847–1947". 
3. ^ John Pullin. "Progress through Mechanical Engineering (1847-1997)", Quiller Press. 
4. ^ http://www.imeche.org.uk/about/pdf/Biography%20of%20William%20Edgar%20CBE.pdf Biography pdf
5. ^ http://www.imeche.org.uk/about/pdf/Andrew_Ives_%20Biography.pdf Biography pdf
6. ^ http://www.imeche.org.uk/about/pdf/alec_osborn_presidential_address_2006.pdf Presidential Address pdf
7. ^ http://www.imeche.org.uk/about/pdf/Alec%20Osborn%20Biography.pdf Biography

External links

• Official website
  • About page
  • Forthcoming conferences and events page
  • Aerospace Industries Division
  • Automobile Division
  • Combustion Engines and Fuels Group
  • Construction and Building Services Division
  • Consultancy and Dispute Resolution
  • Energy, Environment and Sustainability Group
  • Fluid Machinery Group
  • Management Group
  • Mechatronics, Informatics and Control Group
  • Medical Engineering Division
  • Power Industries Division
  • Pressure Systems Group
  • Process Industries Division
  • Railway Division
  • Safety and Reliability Group
  • Structural Technology and Materials Group
  • Thermofluids Group
  • Tribology Group

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