From the Archive: IMechE summer meeting programmes

The founding rules of the Institution stated that there should be three ordinary meetings and one general meeting each year.

Initially all four meetings were held in Birmingham. In 1851 the first meeting away from Birmingham was held in London to coincide with the Great Exhibition. 

From the mid-1850s the decision was made to regularly hold the summer meeting away from Birmingham and the first was held in Glasgow in 1856. The first overseas summer event was in Paris in 1867.

The summer meeting allowed attendees the opportunity to visit a town or city to discover more about the local industry. The summer meeting would take place over a week. A detailed programme of talks, works visits and excursions would be put together and an Institution dinner was held on the first evening. 

In 1897 the Jubilee summer meeting (marking 50 years since the foundation of the Institution) was held in Birmingham. The programme listed 27 companies in the city that were open to visits by members.

The programme for that meeting, along with a selection of other summer meeting programmes, has recently been digitised and added to the IMechE's online Virtual Archive. 

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