History of the Institution of Mechanical Engineers

Founded in 1847 in Birmingham, our original statement of purpose was:

"to give an impulse to invention likely to be useful to the world",

which is not so different from our present mission statement of "improving the world through engineering.”

Explore the sections below to discover what led to our inception in Birmingham and how we have developed since then and visit our Virtual Archive and Archive Catalogue to learn more about our archive collections.