The Society's 250th Year

In 2021 the Smeatonian Society of Civil Engineers celebrated its 250th Anniversary and the establishment of one of the world’s oldest professional societies in March 1771. In the Information Age that defines the 21st century, members of the Smeatonian Society of Civil Engineers are celebrating 250 years of exchanging information in the most congenial, and traditional, formats - through regular discussions over dinner with fellow engineers and interested colleagues and guests.

Always a small society - for many years its membership was restricted to 60 - it has sustained its significance by providing a regular multidisciplinary forum for the UK’s leading engineers and colleagues. With regard to the latter the election of HRH Prince Philip as an Honorary Member In 1953, well-known for his interest in science and technology, created an important Royal link, that was further strengthened by the election of the Princess Royal in 2017. She is one of a number of distinguished women members elected in recent years. The Society has increased its numbers more generally to ensure younger engineers can get involved, and that new disciplines are adequately represented.

Today the Society is thriving as its dinner-based discussions continue to prove an attractive alternative to e-based meetings and formal lectures. Rather than relying only on informal discussions over dinner, which characterised its activities generally,  more formal discussion evenings on often controversial topics have become part of its regular programme, boosting attendance, and attracting a large number of guests. Recent topics have included nano materials, shale gas, the state of the engineering professions, space engineering, community energy, road pricing, artificial intelligence, and the state of the nation’s infrastructure.

In part this development reflects a conscious response to the establishment of other multidisciplinary bodies - The Royal Academy of Engineering (1976) and the Worshipful Company of Engineers (1983) - but it is also a reaffirmation of the Society’s original purpose that:   “… it would be well that some sort of occasional meeting, in a friendly way, was to be held where they (the Engineers) might shake hands together, and be personally known to each other; that thus the sharp edges of their minds might be rubbed off, as it were, by close communication of ideas; and might promote the true end of the public business upon which they should happen to meet in the course of their employment.”

In defining key characteristics which differentiate the modern world from previous historic eras many would identify rapid technological innovation which initially made possible the industrial revolution and has since driven global urbanisation and societal change for more than two centuries, and also the professionalisation of society which replaced feudal and landed elites by groups of individuals whose specialist knowledge made them indispensable to an increasingly sophisticated society, and proved capable of defining themselves through a shared body of knowledge and ethical standards.

In that context the establishment of the Smeatonian Society of Civil Engineers represents a key moment in the creation of the modern world, a moment when a group of leading innovators had sufficient sense of collective belonging to establish themselves as a society to meet regularly to discuss issues of mutual interest in their nascent profession.