Articles
Summer meetings of the IMechE always had a more informal feel. They took place over two days, so there was more time to deliver papers and to make trips and visits. And a joint gathering with the Institution’s equivalent American organisation, held in Chicago in summer 1904, was no exception.
The idea of holding a summer meeting, originally known as an annual provincial meeting, is credited to James Fenton, consulting engineer at the Low Moor Iron Co and an active member of the Institution during the 1850s. The IMechE’s first summer meeting was held on 17 September 1856.
Almost 50 years later, the seed of a joint meeting between the IMechE and the American Society of Mechanical Engineers (ASME) was planted by James Rowan of David Rowan and Son, Glasgow, who had attended the ASME spring meeting in 1902. Following this visit, he wrote to the secretary of ASME, FR Hutton, suggesting there had been a precedent of meetings being organised by IMechE outside the UK and that many members planned to visit the Louisiana Purchase Exposition in St Louis in 1904.
Following this suggestion, the ASME council directed Hutton to send a formal invitation to IMechE on 9 November, 1903. The invitation for a joint meeting in Chicago was accepted by the council on behalf of members in February 1904.
In the days before email and Skype, the scale and timeliness of the organisation required for this visit are awe-inspiring. It was arranged that IMechE members could visit 191 American works in May and June. Efficiency was improved by the use of the Addressograph addressing machine, purchased in 1903. It had “proved very useful addressing envelopes for members intending to visit Chicago”.
Eighty IMechE members and 15 accompanying ladies attended the event. They sailed to New York, which took more than five days, and then travelled by rail for between 24 and 32 hours to reach Chicago.
As well as the IMechE contingent, 350 ASME members and more than 450 guests attended the meeting, which ran from 31 May to 3 June. During the event, each IMechE member was given a badge with his name and number, while accompanying wives and daughters just had a number on their badges. To aid social intercourse, a list of names in numerical order was published every two or three hours.
On the opening day, the representatives of Chicago welcomed the delegates and the presidents of ASME and the IMechE replied. The next four days saw members of both Institutions meeting to read and discuss technical papers. Topics discussed included: the burning of refuse and the use of the heat that this generates; theoretical and practical applications of steam turbines; how to power tall office buildings; the Middlesbrough dock and hydraulic power plant; experiments with a lathe-tool dynamometer; and locomotive testing. At the close of the meeting, there were formal motions of thanks from both presidents.
Visits and excursions were organised to run throughout the event. Members visited the Illinois Steel Company, the Illinois Central Railway, the stockyards and packing house of meat packer Swift and Company, and the Illinois Tunnel Company’s works. The Institution’s thanks for the visit to the Illinois Tunnel Company reads: “The mechanical engineer is entirely wonted to the experience that some of his most successful achievements are where the eye of the superficial observer knows nothing of their real excellence.”
Visits undertaken by the members’ companions included an inspection of the Marshall Field’s department store in Chicago, and two drives through the parks and outskirts of the city.
After the Chicago event, most of the members and their companions visited the St Louis exhibition. Smaller groups also made visits to Cincinnati, Canada, Schenectady and Boston.
This journey to the US is illustrated by glass lantern slides in the archive, which show the sights of New York, Chicago, and other American cities. Digital copies of the slides have been made and will soon be added to the IMechE picture gallery so this event, held more than 100 years ago, can once more come alive.