by Eugene S. Ferguson, ASME Member, 1974

Summary
The American Society of Mechanical Engineers has both a tradition and a solid record of encouraging and supporting historical publications, particularly in the field of biography but also in the history of technical achievements. The numerous books, articles, and commemorative brochures that have been published under Society auspices or with the encouragement of the Society provide a great deal of historical information, much of which would not be otherwise available. These publications make collectively a substantial and tangible witness to the sense of the past that has inspired and in some measure informed a surprisingly large number of prominent individuals who are or have been members of the Society.

A history of the Society was planned in 1908 and published in 1915 in an attractive and durable volume. The celebration in 1930 of the Society's fiftieth anniversary was marked by a special number of Mechanical Engineering. A series of book-length biographies of individuals was commenced in 1912 and continued into the nineteen-fifties; in all, sixteen volumes were published. A valuable series of informative obituary notices, often the only dependable surviving source of information regarding an individual engineer, was started very early in the Society's life and continued systematically until 1949; occasional extended notices have since appeared in Mechanical Engineering.

A number of significant historical articles, written by men who took part in or knew at first hand the development they described, were published in the early Transactions and, after its commencement In 1906, the Proceedings (later renamed Journal and, in 1919, Mechanical Engineering).

Since 1971, a program to encourage appreciation of the history and heritage of mechanical engineering, including the supervision of a National Historic Mechanical Engineering Landmark program, has been undertaken by the Society's History and Heritage Committee. That Committee sees the past as a resource that can be husbanded in various ways. Technical events within the purview of ASME can furnish information of permanent importance and significance. Surviving machines, drawings, photographs, and other objective evidence of accomplishment can convey to future generations some sense of our aspirations and abilities. To the present generation the past offers insights and wisdom that our predecessors spent their lives in obtaining.

A current statement of the Society's sense of the past was made in 1974 before a joint committee of the United States Congress by Donald E. Marlowe, Past President of ASME and currently (1974) Chairman of the History and Heritage Committee:    

For the first half of this century, it has seemed that technological advance was inevitable and that it was always good and that it was limitless. We are now aware that none of these statements are true. But as we contemplate an era in which limited human and material resources will have to be deployed with great care if maximum service to the people is to be secured, we find ourselves desperately seeking guidance from the past. To be very blunt, we do not know what policies will influence the flow of innovation, how to diffuse the benefits of technology into depressed or primitive areas, how to adjust to true technological breakthroughs, how to distinguish between net and gross in technological progress; what the necessary relationship between science and technology is, and many other equally important questions. Only in the last few years have we begun to devote to the history of technology the attention it deserves, for this history, far more than that of kings or ministers, can help us to understand the social impact of technology, and perhaps assist us in setting our course for the future [1].    

 Society History

A history of the ASME was projected in 1908, when a committee made up of John E. Sweet, a founder of the Society, Henry Harrison Suplee, editor of Cassier's Magazine, and Charles W. Hunt published in ASME Proceedings an account of the Society's founding (in 1880), which was in effect the first installment of an ambitious history of the Society. Suplee gathered more material for the history; eventually Frederick R. Hutton, Secretary of the Society from 1883 to 1906 and its president in 1906, took over the writing and produced in 1915 an attractive and informative volume, copiously illustrated. Clear, full-page portraits of each of the first thirty-four presidents, three treasurers, and two secretaries were included. The several meeting rooms and buildings occupied by the Society were illustrated, including the Engineering Societies' Building on 39th Street, dedicated in 1907 [2].

A concern with historical objects and memorabilia as well as a narrative record was evident in the history. Many portraits, drawings, and other objects are mentioned and their locations occasionally specified in offices, library, and other public spaces. Some of the objects were probably misplaced or lost when the Society moved to its present quarters, but an inventory of historical portraits and other objects might recapture a number of things now unknown or forgotten [3].

The historical development of the Boiler Code, one of ASME's proudest achievements, was recorded by Arthur M. Greene, Jr., a member of the Boiler and Pressure Vessel Committee from 1915 to 1943, published serially in Mechanical Engineering, and published separately as a substantial and attractive volume [4]-(a). A historical summary of the Diesel and Gas Engine Power Division was prepared recently by T. M. Robie for the fiftieth anniversary of the Division's founding. Robie's bibliography lists two or three earlier historical papers presented at division meetings [5]. As yet unpublished, Ralph A. Sherman's "Fuels Division of the ASME 1920-1972" is an informative and perceptive historical essay [6]-(b).

Anniversary Publications

A Fortieth Anniversary Meeting of ASME, held in New York in 1920, was addressed by Henry Towne, oldest past president (1889) of the Society and others, including J. Herbert Case, of the New York Federal Reserve Bank, and, as a conciliatory gesture, Samuel Gompers, perennial president of the American Federation of Labor. The proceedings were reported in Mechanical Engineering [7].

A Carnot Centenary Commemoration was held in New York in December, 1924, and reported in Mechanical Engineering. Sadi Carnot's seminal book On the Motive Power of Heat, published in 1824, had been translated into English by Robert Thurston, first president of ASME, and published by him in 1890, with a second edition in 1897. Thurston's translation was republished by the Society in 1939 with a further edition in 1959 [8].

In 1927, the Council of ASME announced that "plans are already in hand for the Spring Meeting and the Semicentennial" of the Society, to be held in April of 1930, "commemorating the first meeting fifty years ago, April 7, 1880, held at Stevens Institute of Technology" [9].

A special Fiftieth Anniversary issue of Mechanical Engineering was published in April, 1930. The first part of the issue, entitled "To Perpetuate Great Names," included over a hundred portraits of presidents, honorary members, and others. The second part of the issue con-tained "a group of reports presenting the history of technical development since 1880," individual reports dealt with aspects of power, manufacturing, transportation, applied mechanics, and engineering education.

The May issue of Mechanical Engineering reported the Anniversary Celebration, which started in New York and then moved to the National Council Chamber of the U.S. Chamber of Commerce, in Washington. A pageant, written by a Yale professor and given by students of Stevens Institute of Technology, celebrated "the increasing triumphs of the mechanical engineer." Among the members of the cast were Intelligence, Imagination, Conversion, and Finance; holding central sway was Mature Control. In Washington, the representatives of foreign technical societies gave prepared papers on the "Social and economic effects of engineering upon the lives of people" during the preceding half-century in, their respective countries. President Herbert Hoover, a member of ASME, addressed the Anniversary Dinner in the Mayflower Hotel, and a reception was held in the White House [10]-(c).

A hard-cover volume, published as a result of the Society's Fiftieth Anniversary, was edited for the Anniversary Committee by the well-known historian Charles A. Beard. In the Council Report of 1929 the plans for the volume were explained:

Much thought has been given to publications commemorative of the Society's Fiftieth Anniversary to be celebrated in April, 1930. The Committee has received the enthusiastic interest and cooperation of Dr. Charles A. Beard in the preparation of a book which will be a symposium published by Longmans, Green, and Company under the title Toward Civilization. The contributors to this symposium are eminent engineers and scientists, and they will attempt to answer from the point of view of the technologist the many indictments which have been leveled at the machine civilization of today by philosophers and humanists [11].

The particular provocation for this project was a volume edited in 1928 by Beard and published under the title Whither Mankind. That book, consisting of essays by historians, philosophers, and others, contained "a challenge" which was taken seriously by Clarence Davies, then Assistant Secretary of the Society. Davies persuaded both editor and publishers to make the book and helped line up the contributors [12]-(d).

In 1930, Toward Civilization took its place as a companion volume to Whither Mankind. Although neither collection of essays contained anything that in 1930 would have surprised or instructed an informed reader, the occasion served to elicit statements of faith of several prominent mechanical engineers, such as Ralph Flanders, Lillian Gilbreth and Elmer Sperry, in the efficacy of a technical approach to human problems [13].

Another commemorative publication designed to answer critics of engineers was the brochure that in 1937 recorded the proceedings of the "forum presenting the career and achievements of George Westinghouse on the 90th anniversary of his birth." Conrad Lauer, a past president of ASME, had written in 1934:  

The engineer is on the defensive in justifying his work and establishing himself as a constructive element in civilization and a driving force in providing for the well-being of mankind.

The American Society of Mechanical Engineers should dramatize the contributions of the outstanding leaders in engineering invention, design, construction, and application [14].

The Westinghouse commemorative brochure(e) contained testimonials of prominent men, some of whom were former associates of Westinghouse.

 Biographical Series

The first biographical volume to be published was the autobiography of John Fritz, a patriarch of the iron and steel industry, who at ninety, in 1912, reluctantly agreed to see in print what he had intended as a posthumous testament [15].

The evident worth of the book as the record of an important and widely revered engineer led in time to an active program of publishing book-length biographies. The 1916 Council Report promised that "a Biographies Committee is to be appointed to supervise the preparation and editing of biographies of noted engineers [16]. Ad hoc committees supervised the biographies of George Westinghouse (1921), Frederick Winslow Taylor (1923), and John A. Brashear (1924) [17]; by 1925 a Biography Advisory Committee had been formed; over the next thirty years, with the practical assistance of Secretaries Calvin Rice and Clarence Davies, the Committee saw to the publication of an impressive series of biographies and autobiographies. In Rice's review, in 1930, of the Society's history, he noted the publication to date of eight biographies. The aim of the Biography Advisory Committee, he wrote, was "to add wisely to this brief list as years go on, believing that such biography is not only an important contribution to engineering literature, but that it is an unsurpassed source of inspiration for younger men [18]." One remarkable aspect of the biography program is the number of prominent and busy men who thought it important. The committee, during the thirty-odd years it lasted, was served by such men as W. F. M. Goss, dean of Purdue's engineering school, Ralph Flanders, for many years a United States Senator from Vermont, Fred R. Low, George Orrok, and Roy V. Wright.

Financing the publication of biographies was a perennial problem. Some of the volumes were paid for by friends or associates of the subject; several of them were issued in both a subscription edition and a trade edition, the latter presumably at the risk of the commercial publisher involved [19]. It is perhaps significant that men who so often, in their professional pursuits, raised the question "Will it pay?" would invest so much of their energy in a program that was unlikely ever to breakeven.

A list of the biographies published under ASME auspices or with its encouragement appears below, in Appendix A.

Necrology

The series of book-length biographies is clearly an outstanding contribution to our historical understanding, yet the Society's necrology, another biographical undertaking which was sedulously pursued during nearly the first sixty-five years of the Society's existence, provides now an irreplaceable record of individual mechanical engineers. Informative obituary notices appeared in the Transactions through 1926, in the Record and Index during the three years it was published (1927 through 1929), and again in the Transactions through 1949. Obituaries will be found in the earlier Proceedings and Journal, and a number of biographical sketches have been published in Mechanical Engineering, but as the Society grew and the Necropolis became overcrowded the burden of recognizing individual careers was apparently no longer a tolerable one.

A volume of lasting value to historians of technology and other scholars could be readily assembled by simply reproducing all the obituary notices that have been published in the Society's periodicals.

Reminiscences

Extended discussions of papers in the early Transactions add depth and understanding to the matters treated in the papers. Many personal recollections were recorded in this way. A classic description by Alfred C. Hobbs of his successful opening inl851 in London, of the famous Bramah lock, appears in the discussion of a paper on American machinery at international exhibitions [20]. The incident apparently encouraged Hobbs, a lively storyteller, to prepare in the following year a paper on "Locks and their Failings" [21]. Robert Allison, on the other hand, contributed in 1895 a paper on "the difficulties and trials of the old-time machinists, of which the writer was one." Although the account is valuable in the permanent record and much discussion followed the talk, it was probably merely tedious to younger listeners [22].

Some further recollections come from Clarence Davies:

*  John Clinton Parker of Philadelphia was a critic of the ASME Boiler Code starting in 1915 before the Code was published and continuing until his death in 1946. In 1934 he started action in the Supreme Court of New York County, first requiring a review of all Society activities and later bringing suit against 47 members of the Council for the return to the Society treasury of $260,000 spent in developing the Engineering Index which he claimed was not provided for in the Society's charter. He won the case in the lower court but the decision was overturned by the Appellate Division and the Court of Appeals, in. 1939. The case cost the Society $30,000 in legal fees and the only tangible result from it was the ability to quote the following as a footnote to the ASME Certificate of Incorporation: "That in promoting the arts and sciences connected with mechanical construction for scientific purposes, The American Society of Mechanical Engineers may employ any reasonable means to accomplish these ends and it is not restricted to the specific means stated in its charter."

The "Parker Case" took five years of my time as I started in as the new Secretary in 1934 and was full of business recovering from the depression--keeping the society in the black, organizing the Engineers Council for Professional Development, among many other things. The "Parker Case" may be worth a chapter in a future Society history.

* The Society's 75th Anniversary in 1955 was a national year-long celebration, each of eight meetings during the year being exciting occasions also worth a chapter in a future Society history.

* The United Engineering Center at 345 East 47th Street started in earnest on February 12, 1957, when I loaded the United Engineering Trustees into rental cars and visited all the available sites in New York City. At noon the Real Estate Committee met and voted to recommend the present site to the Trustees. At lunch, the Board of UET voted to approve the site. Work was started the next day to buy the site which was finally secured in August. ASME moved in Labor Day, 1961. I was Executive Director at the new Engineering Center from 1957 to 1961.

History Articles

Significant historical articles have appeared from time to time in the Transactions and in Mechanical Engineering. More than fifty articles are listed under "History" rubrics in the ASME Seventy-Seven Year Index 1880-1956 (1957), which are reproduced in Appendix B. It should be noted that these lists are not exhaustive since many history articles are listed under appropriate subject headings rather than "History."

Of particular note are the articles which supply fresh, often unique, information. Articles on rolling mills by C. H. Morgan (1901), on high-speed engines by Charles T. Porter (1901), and on hydraulic turbines by Edward Dean Adams (1930), are examples of those written by men whose own careers helped make the history they recorded. The extended article on the work of Erasmus D. Leavitt, published in the Transactions shortly after his death, is a permanently valuable contribution [23]. In 1886, George H. Babcock, one of the founders of Babcock & Wilcox Company, published the article "Substitutes for Steam," a fresh and comprehensive historical review of attempts to use naptha, ammonia, and other fluids in a vapor cycle in order to improve its economy [24]. Three historical articles on turbines were sponsored at the Annual Meeting in 1936 by the "Joint Division on Engineering History" and subsequently published in Mechanical Engineering. The papers treated the historical development of the turbines of, respectively, Westinghouse, General Electric, and Allis-Chalmers [25].

A number of pedestrian papers on the engineer's historic contributions to civilization have also appeared in the Society's publications. It is difficult for an editor to say "no" to a prominent member of the Society whose critical faculties do not extend to his own version of history. Unfortunately, such "schoolboy" history, which is part of a culture's mythology (for example, Watt invented the steam engine, Fulton the steamboat; engineers were ignorant and simple-minded until they learned mathematical methods), repels intelligent engineering stu-dents and confirms their notion that history can have nothing of value to say to them [26].

 Engineering History Cornmittees

A persistent interest in the study of engineering history will be found in the Society's publications. A totally unexplained "Historical Guild" appeared as one of the special administrative committees in a Council Report of 1924, but it did not outlast the year [27].

In 1934, two dozen ASME members proposed to form within the Founder Societies (ASCE, AIME, ASME, AIEE)   "a body to encourage the study of the history of early American engineers and engineering and technology in the United States. The plan is to bring together engineers in all branches of the profession who are interested in engineering history, who are engaged in historical research, or who are interested in encouraging the recording of historic developments for the benefit of those who will be engaged in historical research at a later date . . . .  

A charter membership of at least two hundred, with annual dues not to exceed four dollars, was the goal [28]. The proposal, coming as it did deep in the Great Depression, did not elicit the hoped-for response.(f) The "Joint Division on Engineering History," mentioned above as sponsors of the 1936 session on steam turbine history, was no doubt an outgrowth of this proposal, but the relationships are not dear.

Museum Committees

Early in 1913, the ASME "Committee on National Museum" reported that a German commission of five members, "with as many engineer assistants," had been sent to the United States by the Deutsches Museum, Munich, to "look for more contributions of machines, models, drawings, etc., to enable them to add an American section to each of their main divisions and to encourage American engineers to begin a similar movement." Attempting to arouse interest in a "great National Museum of the Industrial Arts," the Committee saw its immediate aim to "preserve the landmarks of our journey to a higher civilization and thus write in enduring materials of our own fashioning, the true history of the American people" [29].

Ten years later, an editorial in Mechanical Engineering, entitled "Engineering Museum Requires Interest and Aid of Entire Profession," explained how the establishment of a National Museum of Engineering and Industry was now in the hands of a committee representing all the national engineering societies [30]. In 1924, a pretentious brochure, issued from the Engineering Societies Building in New York, outlined plans for the national museum as an extension of the Smithsonian Institution in Washington, with branch museums in several cities. The first two branches were to be in Chicago and New York. In Chicago, Julius Rosenwald had promised a million dollars, which was eventually used in development of the Chicago Museum of Science and Industry; in New York, a bequest of ASME past president Henry R. Towne was to be used to establish a "Museum of the Peaceful Arts," which eventually opened as the short-lived Museum of Science and Industry [31].

History and Heritage Committee

Formed in 1971, the present History and Heritage Committee spent its early years in an attempt to interest ASME local sections in learning, by conducting surveys and making inventories, of historically significant and interesting local survivals of particular pertinence to the practice and development of mechanical engineering. An extensive listing of early mill-sites and related mechanical engineering works and artifacts in Northern New England was completed in 1973 by the Northern New England Section under the leadership and superintendence of Forrest E. Lange, Chairman of the Section's History and Heritage Committee. The resulting Historic Engineering Record has been published in an attractive brochure [32].

A National Historic Mechanical Engineering Landmark program has been undertaken by the national committee in support of local History and Heritage Committees; initially, the response has been enthusiastic. The first national landmark is the San Francisco Cliff House and Ferries Cable Railway (1887), the second the steam-driven water-pumping engine (1894) designed by Erasmus D. Leavitt and located in the Chestnut Hill Pumping Station in suburban Boston. The third national landmark is the Wood high-volume screw pump (1912) of the New Orleans Sewerage and Water Board. In each of these dedication ceremonies Daniel Drucker, President of ASME, presented bronze plaques to the appropriate authorities; each ceremony gave rise to a publication [33].

Conclusion

The published historical work reviewed here provides a great deal of historical information that would otherwise be unavailable. It represents, moreover, "A Sense of the Past" on the part of a significant number of ASME members, many of them leaders of the Society.

As the present review suggests, the History and Heritage Committee breaks no new ground as it encourages the publication of historical information. It can, however, help to raise the quality of the history to a new level and increase greatly its interest and apparent relevance to many engineers. This will require the recognition of a discipline of history and a willingness to deal thoughtfully and responsibly with the questions of values and meaning. The discipline of history involves analysis different in kind from that of the engineer; its variables cannot be quantified without distortion or impoverishment; and attempts to standardize analytical operations are destined to yield absurdities. History deals, moreover, with meanings and moral values. Whenever meaning and values are involved, honest men of good will can differ, and varying interpretations will be made of the same event. Historical questions worth asking always have ambiguous answers, and the answers provide us not with conclusions as much as a basis for reflection and further discussion.

The training of engineers tends to suppress rather than encourage a sense of history, but it is clear that many engineers transcend their academic background. As Donald Marlowe has pointed out, the history an engineer learns gives him no sense of its ambiguity. "The skimpy historical education of engineers," he writes, "leaves them with a firm belief that (without qualification) George Washington was the father of his country; Eli Whitney was the father of mass production; Fulton did invent the steamboat. A little knowledge is, indeed, a very dangerous thing" [34].

While the History and Heritage Committee will clearly serve a useful purpose in planning and coordinating a National Historic Mechanical Engineering Landmark program, its lasting importance will probably depend chiefly upon its success in encouraging and developing, critical and relevant historical publications.