History
Conceived in the late 1960s, during the excitement of the Apollo programme and the buzz of Harold Wilson’s ‘white heat of technology’, the Fellowship of Engineering was born in the same year as Concorde’s first commercial flight.
The Fellowship met for the first time on 11 June 1976 at Buckingham Palace where 126 of the UK’s finest engineers were enrolled, including jet engine genius Air Commodore Sir Frank Whittle, design guru Sir Ove Arup, radar pioneer Sir George MacFarlane, bouncing bomb inventor Sir Barnes Wallis, father of the UK computer industry, Sir Maurice Wilkes and the Fellowship’s first President, Lord Hinton who had driven the UK’s supremacy in nuclear power.
The Fellowship focused on championing excellence in all fields of engineering and activities began in earnest in the mid-1970s when the Distinction lecture series, now known as the Hinton lectures, was founded; the Fellowship was asked to advise the Department of Industry for the first time and the Academy became host and presenter of the MacRobert prize.
In the 1980s, the Fellowship acquired its own Royal Charter, its first government grant-in-aid in addition to significant industrial funding, initiated its research programme to build bridges between academia and industry and opened its doors to International and Honorary Fellows.
The Academy’s first major education initiative, Engineering Education Continuum began in 1990 and has now evolved into the BEST programme and Tomorrow’s Engineers.
The Academy’s increasing level of influence – both in policy, research and education – was recognised when it was granted a royal title and became The Royal Academy of Engineering in 1992.
Read more about this topic: Royal Academy Of Engineering
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