1. A Sense of History

The American Society of Mechanical Engineers reached the fiftieth anniversary of its founding in 1930. This kind of institutional milestone usually calls for special observance to celebrate an organization’s continuity and define its place in history. But besides the conventional impulses for that sort of exercise, the Society’s leaders were men with a taste for ceremony and a conviction that their profession deserved a prominent part in the story of human progress. ASME’s anniversary festivities thus promised to be rich in the self-congratulation customary on such occasions.