Informal meetings are said to have taken place in 1846, at locomotive designer
Charles Beyer's house in Cecil Street,
Manchester, or alternatively at
Bromsgrove at the house of
James McConnell, after viewing locomotive trials at the
Lickey Incline. Beyer,
Richard Peacock,
George Selby,
Archibald Slate and
Edward Humphrys were present. Bromsgrove seems the more likely candidate for the initial discussion, not least because McConnell was the driving force in the early years. A meeting took place at the Queen's Hotel in Birmingham to consider the idea further on 7 October and a committee appointed with McDonnell at its head to see the idea to its inauguration. The Institution of Mechanical Engineers was then founded on 27 January 1847, in the Queen's Hotel next to
Curzon Street station in Birmingham by the railway pioneer
George Stephenson and others. McConnnell became the first chairman. However, this account has been challenged as part of a pattern of exaggeration on Smiles' part aimed at glorifying the struggles that various Victorian mechanical engineers had to overcome in their personal efforts to attain greatness. Though there was certainly coolness between Stephenson and the Institution of Civil Engineers, it is more likely that the motivation behind the founding of the Institution of Mechanical Engineers was simply the need for a specific home for the growing number of mechanical engineers employed in the burgeoning railway and manufacturing industries. followed by his son,
Robert Stephenson, in 1849. Beyer became vice-president and was one of the first to present papers to the Institution;
Charles Geach was the first treasurer. Throughout the 19th and 20th centuries some of Britain's most notable engineers held the position of president, including
Joseph Whitworth,
Carl Wilhelm Siemens and
Harry Ricardo. It operated from premises in Birmingham until 1877 when it moved to London, taking up its present headquarters on
Birdcage Walk in 1899. == Birdcage Walk ==