Holley chaired the first meeting . . . .

"Thirty of the most prominent men in American mechanical industry attended that first meeting of ASME founders in the New York editorial offices of American Machinist on 16 February 1880. They chose as chairman the brilliant consultant to the American Bessemer Steel Association, Alexander Lyman Holley, and characteristically, he provided a focus for the gathering, outlining both the intellectual boundaries of the mechanical engineering profession and the advantages to be derived from association. All the steps necessary to establish a new engineering society were taken at that meeting. It generated a membership list, committees to nominate officers and to draft by-laws, and scheduled a formal organizational meeting for 7 April in the Stevens Institute auditorium to ratify these measures."
--Bruce Sinclair, U.S. historian, A Centennial History of the American Society of Mechanical Engineers (Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 1980), pg. 22