Getting around: A map was included with the meeting programme By 1914, the institution had been organising summer meeting visits to other countries, or to cities outside London, for years. That year, it decided that members would visit Paris, with the meeting taking place from 6 to 10 July.
In the archive, we have all the old programmes from these summer meetings. They unveil a fascinating picture detailing everything, from the kinds of factories that members visited as well as the restaurants they ate at, to the price of a horse cab.
On these visits, each member would wear a specially designed badge, which would act as a ‘ticket’ – “serving as passes for visiting various clubs, works, etc” – and identify the wearer as a proud member of the IMechE.
The badge for the Paris visit, which appears on the front page of the programme for the meeting, was made by A Chobillon in Paris, a private manufacturer of badges and medals. Showing the flags of both the UK and France, with an IMechE logo in the centre, they cost members 1 franc 35 centimes to purchase, council minutes show.
Members travelled by train to Paris on special return tickets, which could be “dated to suit members’ convenience”. The fare from London’s Charing Cross, for example, via Lille or Valenciennes, cost £2 1s. 8d for first class and £1 19s. 11d for second class. The journey from London would have taken around seven or eight hours, according to the timetable in the meeting programme.
The papers presented by French members at the meeting had been curated by the committee months before, and carefully selected. They ranged from “Signalling on the French railways” and “Internal combustion engines” to “Improvements in motor lorries”.
Papers were presented in the mornings and, after lunch each day, there was a programme of excursions to places selected for their relevance to the engineering of the time. Tours were often led by a combination of those who worked in the factories and institutions and French members of the IMechE or of France’s Société des Ingénieurs Civils.
During these trips, members often travelled by ‘wagonette’ – a small horsecar with springs and a wooden, bench-type seat – or by motor omnibus, an early version of modern buses.
One such excursion was to the Compagnie Electro-Mécanique in Le Bourget, just outside Paris. Established in 1892, this company had recently been constructing Parsons steam turbines which were then relatively unknown in France, with cylinder engines and De Laval turbines having held the field alone. The firm’s output from that date amounted to “a combined motive force of over 850,000 horse-power”.
The Paris visit was declared a great success. But a little over two weeks after members returned home, the First World War broke out.
Many members of the institution went to serve their country, using their engineering expertise via the government department of munitions, while also serving as soldiers at the front. Many engineers subsequently lost their lives, and the institution commemorates these tragic losses in our honour roll.
Indeed, the president at the time of the Paris visit, Sir Hay Frederick Donaldson, was on HMS Hampshire with Lord Kitchener in 1916 when it hit a mine and sank off the
Orkney Islands.
While the war was on, summer visits were stopped. The institution poured its energies into the war effort, using its engineering skills and expertise to help.
This year marks the centenary of the First World War and, starting from August, we will be commemorating the heroic efforts and achievements of all those members who were involved.
Medal of honour: The original IMechE badge worn by members,
made by A Chobillon in Paris