May 2014

NSPE TODAY
NSPE: 80 Years of Supporting PEs

Four score ago, a handful of state engineering societies convened a meeting at the behest of bridge builder David B. Steinman, P.E. At that meeting in New York City on May 25, 1934, the idea for the National Society of Professional Engineers was born.

NSPE FOUNDER DAVID STEINMAN, P.E., STANDING ATOP THE MACKINAC BRIDGE, WHICH HE REHABILITATED IN 1948.

Steinman brought the New York State Society of Professional Engineers together with the New Jersey Association of Professional Engineers and Land Surveyors, the Pennsylvania Society of Professional Engineers, and the Connecticut Society of Professional Engineers to discuss the creation of a single organization to support licensed professional engineers.

When viewing the profession as a whole in the January 1935 issue of The American Engineer, the predecessor to PE magazine, Steinman observed, “the technical problems of civil, mechanical, electrical, mining, and chemical engineers are divergent; but the professional problems are alike.” He saw an inherent value in bringing together “engineers of all sections of the country, and of all branches of the profession, in a unity of strength, purpose, and accomplishment.”

Having previously served as the president of the New York Society, Steinman wanted to create a national society linking the various state societies and local chapters, founded on the basic principle of professional licensure. The new society would focus solely on nontechnical concerns relevant to all engineers—thus avoiding the divergent problems he wrote about in 1935. Eighty years later, these concerns have remained central to NSPE’s goals.

Even more formative to Steinman’s vision was his time as the president of the American Association of Engineers in 1925–26 (which eventually merged with NSPE in 1966). “Although the AAE had as one of its planks the enactment of registration laws in all states, it had not made this a prerequisite for membership”, wrote past NSPE Executive Director Paul Robbins, P.E., in his book Building for Professional Growth: A History of the National Society of Professional Engineers 1934–1984. “Steinman believed that the bedrock of a new organization should be registration”; this belief emerged as the third of 10 objectives set down at the historic September 3, 1934, meeting that formally established NSPE.

Check these pages in the coming months for more on NSPE’s 80th anniversary.