The Cleveland Institution of Engineers (CIE) is a regional engineering institution in the Teesside region of

England England is a country that is part of the United Kingdom. It shares land borders with Wales to its west and Scotland to its north. The Irish Sea lies northwest and the Celtic Sea to the southwest. It is separated from continental Europe b ...

. It aims to serve the regional scientific and engineering community through a wide range of technical lectures and visits and by acting as the professional body for materials scientists and engineers. The CIE is one of the oldest institutions of its kind in the world and has been in continuous existence since it was founded in 1864. It is affiliated to the

Institute of Materials, Minerals and Mining The Institute of Materials, Minerals and Mining (IOM3) is a UK engineering institution whose activities encompass the whole materials cycle, from exploration and extraction, through characterisation, processing, forming, finishing and applicatio ...

and a founder members of th
Cleveland Scientific Institution

A brief history of the Institution

The Cleveland Institution of Engineers is possibly the oldest Institution of its kind in the World. It was founded in 1864 by a small group of Engineering pioneers from the Steel and Railway Industries of the

Cleveland Cleveland ( ), officially the City of Cleveland, is a city in the U.S. state of Ohio and the county seat of Cuyahoga County. Located in the northeastern part of the state, it is situated along the southern shore of Lake Erie, across the U.S. ...

area. The first meeting was held in the home of the first secretary, Thomas Whitwell, on 21 September 1864 and the motion was carried that:- ''"A society be formed, the object of which shall be meeting together at regular intervals, of the Engineers of the Cleveland District for the furtherance of the Science of Engineering"'' 42 members of the Engineering community joined the Institution at the outset with a membership fee of one

Guinea Guinea ( ),, fuf, 𞤘𞤭𞤲𞤫, italic=no, Gine, wo, Gine, nqo, ߖߌ߬ߣߍ߫, bm, Gine officially the Republic of Guinea (french: République de Guinée), is a coastal country in West Africa. It borders the Atlantic Ocean to the we ...

. The Institution was instrumental in the industrial and academic growth of the area, and in helping to set up the then ''Constantine College'' which is now Teesside University. Throughout both World Wars and the Depression, the Institution continued to provide a regular programme of lectures and scientific excursions and to this day provides the Engineering and Scientific community of the Teesside area with a wide and varied lecture programme on all aspects of engineering. From 1864 until 1942 the proceedings of the institution's technical meetings were published. Copies of the complete series of proceedings and the institution's minute books until 2001 are kept at the Teesside Archives in

Middlesbrough Middlesbrough ( ) is a town on the southern bank of the River Tees in North Yorkshire, England. It is near the North York Moors national park. It is the namesake and main town of its local borough council area. Until the early 1800s, the a ...

In the 2013/2014 session the institution celebrated its 150th anniversary, with the main events taking place in the autumn of 2014. To mark the occasion a stained glass window with the institution's emblem was unveiled in St Cuthbert's Church in Marton, Middlesbrough during a dedication service on 23 November 2014, led by the Very Reverend Paul Ferguson, Bishop of

Whitby Whitby is a seaside town, port and civil parish in the Scarborough borough of North Yorkshire, England. Situated on the east coast of Yorkshire at the mouth of the River Esk, Whitby has a maritime, mineral and tourist heritage. Its East Clif ...

. St Cuthbert's churchyard contains the vaults of the

Bolckow and Vaughan Bolckow, Vaughan & Co., Ltd was an English ironmaking and mining company founded in 1864, based on the partnership since 1840 of its two founders, Henry Bolckow and John Vaughan. The firm drove the dramatic growth of Middlesbrough and the prod ...

families.

Formation of The Cleveland Institution of Engineers

In the last half of the nineteenth century, industry in

developed at a rate never again repeated. In 1830 the Stockton-Darlington railway had been extended to

and the port established to ship

coal Coal is a combustible black or brownish-black sedimentary rock, formed as rock strata called coal seams. Coal is mostly carbon with variable amounts of other elements, chiefly hydrogen, sulfur, oxygen, and nitrogen. Coal is formed when dea ...

. During the 1850s there grew an iron industry based on the easily accessible deposits of phosphoric ironstone in the

Cleveland Hills The Cleveland Hills are a range of hills on the north-west edge of the North York Moors in North Yorkshire, England, overlooking Cleveland and Teesside. They lie entirely within the boundaries of the North York Moors National Park. Part of the ...

, and a fledgling

engineering Engineering is the use of scientific method, scientific principles to design and build machines, structures, and other items, including bridges, tunnels, roads, vehicles, and buildings. The discipline of engineering encompasses a broad rang ...

industry stimulated by the demands of the burgeoning railway network and the

ironworks An ironworks or iron works is an industrial plant where iron is smelted and where heavy iron and steel products are made. The term is both singular and plural, i.e. the singular of ''ironworks'' is ''ironworks''. Ironworks succeeded bloomeri ...

themselves. The

Durham coalfield The Durham Coalfield is a coalfield in north-east England. It is continuous with the Northumberland Coalfield to its north. It extends from Bishop Auckland in the south to the boundary with the county of Northumberland along the River Tyne in the ...

was a source of excellent

coking coal Metallurgical coal or coking coal is a grade of coal that can be used to produce good-quality coke. Coke is an essential fuel and reactant in the blast furnace process for primary steelmaking. The demand for metallurgical coal is highly coupled ...

s and the railway provided affordable bulk transport; there was easy access to the sea for export of products and the port was developed; construction of the

South Gare South Gare is an area of reclaimed land and breakwater on the southern side of the mouth of the River Tees in Redcar and Cleveland, England. It is accessed by taking the South Gare Road (private road) from Fisherman's Crossing at the western en ...

began in 1863. Large scale production of

steel Steel is an alloy made up of iron with added carbon to improve its strength and fracture resistance compared to other forms of iron. Many other elements may be present or added. Stainless steels that are corrosion- and oxidation-resistant ty ...

from local ironstone via the

Bessemer converter The Bessemer process was the first inexpensive industrial process for the mass production of steel from molten pig iron before the development of the open hearth furnace. The key principle is removal of impurities from the iron by oxidation with ...

was made possible by development of the Thomas-Gilchrist process at

's works in

and Eston in 1878-79; and sufficient capital to finance developments was in the hands of a few men who were related by blood, marriage or religion. Conditions were thus ideal for the rapid growth of a thriving

industry supported by relatively cheap, locally produced

iron Iron () is a chemical element with symbol Fe (from la, ferrum) and atomic number 26. It is a metal that belongs to the first transition series and group 8 of the periodic table. It is, by mass, the most common element on Earth, right in f ...

and

. Labour was attracted from all parts of the country and

grew rapidly, becoming a

municipal borough Municipal boroughs were a type of local government district which existed in England and Wales between 1835 and 1974, in Northern Ireland from 1840 to 1973 and in the Republic of Ireland from 1840 to 2002. Broadly similar structures existed in S ...

in 1853, a

parliamentary borough A borough is an administrative division in various English-speaking countries. In principle, the term ''borough'' designates a self-governing walled town, although in practice, official use of the term varies widely. History In the Middle Ag ...

in 1867 and in 1888 a

county borough County borough is a term introduced in 1889 in the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Ireland, to refer to a borough or a city independent of county council control, similar to the unitary authorities created since the 1990s. An equivalent ter ...

. It was in this period of rapid industrial development and municipal growth that the Cleveland Institution of Engineers was formed, on 15 September 1864, at a meeting of seven local industrialists at Thomas Whitwell's residence in Church Row,

Stockton-on-Tees Stockton-on-Tees, often simply referred to as Stockton, is a market town in the Borough of Stockton-on-Tees in County Durham, England. It is on the northern banks of the River Tees, part of the Teesside built-up area. The town had an estimated ...

. The chief promoters of the Institution were Jeremiah Head, originally articled to Robert Stephenson in Newcastle;

Thomas Wrightson Sir Thomas Wrightson, 1st Baronet, (31 March 1839 – 18 June 1921) was a British Conservative politician. Wrightson sat as Member of Parliament (MP) for Stockton between 1892 and 1895 and for St Pancras East between 1899 and 1906. In 1900 h ...

who initially worked in W G Armstrong's works at Elswick; and Thomas Whitwell, who was first an apprentice in Alfred Kitching's Darlington locomotive works and then in Robert Stephenson's works in Newcastle. ''"They had studied together and when they later found themselves working in the

district, they were anxious to draw to themselves kindred spirits to discuss engineering problems as they presented themselves for solution."'' Thus began The Cleveland Institution of Engineers which since that time has been an important forum on Teesside for the presentation and discussion of industrial problems and developments. The three chief promoters at the formation of the Institution each served as Secretary and Vice President in its early years and each one subsequently became President: Jeremiah Head from 1871 to 1874;

from 1874 to 1876; and Thomas Whitwell from 1876 to 1878. In August 1878 in the second year of his presidency Thomas Whitwell was accidentally killed by scalding steam at W Whitwell and Company's Thornaby Ironworks and a brilliant career was extinguished. Thomas Wrightson served as President for a second time in the 1914 session, the fiftieth anniversary of the Institution's founding. Throughout most of the twentieth century the name

Head Wrightson Head Wrightson was a big heavy industrial firm based at Thornaby-on-Tees, North Yorkshire, England. It specialised in the manufacture of large industrial products such as fractional distillation columns, which sometimes needed special transport ...

signified a major engineering manufacturer and contractor trading internationally and based on Teesside. Although, unlike his brothers Arthur and Howard, Jeremiah Head was not a direct partner in the

organisation he had married Rebecca Ingram Wrightson,

's sister. By 1868 the principal partners in the enterprise were Arthur Head and

and Arthur Head was appointed chairman when the business became a limited liability company in 1888. On Arthur Head's retirement in 1909

, then Sir Thomas, (in 1900 he had been created a baronet for his political services) became chairman and retained the position until his death in 1921. Some 50 years later

merged with the Davy Corporation which itself subsequently became part of Voest Alpine Industries, present today on Teesside as

Primetals Technologies Primetals Technologies Limited, is an engineering and plant construction company headquartered in London, United Kingdom, with numerous locations worldwide. It serves clients in the metals industry, both the ferrous and the nonferrous metals sec ...

Notable past presidents

Presidents board of the Cleveland Institution of Engineers

Listed below are notable past presidents of the CIE. The names of all past presidents are displayed on the Presidents Board, which is housed at the

Materials Processing Institute The Materials Processing Institute is a research centre serving organisations that work in advanced materials, low-carbon energy and the circular economy. The Institute is based in Tees Valley in the northeast of England. Background The Bri ...

on Teesside.

References

{{authority control Engineering societies based in the United Kingdom