A variety of factors prompted Leavitt, Thurston, Sweet, Worthington, and the other founders of ASME to promote the creation of a new professional engineering society in 1880: need for a forum to discuss technical problems and share views, desire to promote mechanical engineering as a profession, a means of guiding the next generation. One of the primary factors that prompted the formation of ASME, however, was a desire to establishment of codes and standards relevant to the field. Not surprisingly, codes and standards were topics that occupied considerable attention in the early volumes of the Transactions of the American Society...