Presidents' Choice
As the current President, I’m delighted to welcome you to our feature which, since it started, has proved very popular with over 100,000 downloads of articles so far. Here we hope you will find a range of papers that will be of interest and use to professional engineers – all
completely free to access.
There are two main parts to The Presidents’ Choice:
Addresses
When Presidents of the IMechE take office, they deliver an extended Presidential Address. For the first time, we make all the recent addresses available in one place. While these normally have a strong biographical component, and are nonetheless interesting for that, they also contain a wealth of experience and technical detail.
Similarly, the recent Thomas Hawksley Lectures are gathered here. Hawksley’s son initiated these in 1913; they are presentations by eminent engineers on a diverse array of mechanical engineering topics.
George Stephenson Lectures can also now be accessed on this site. Stephenson was one of the founders of the IMechE and its first President. These lectures are typically now given by the President on overseas trips. This has not always been the case. They are also often, but not always, similar to the Presidential address, and provide another interesting resource.
The latest set of lectures to be included is from the James Clayton (1869-1944) series. These were inaugurated in 1945. Those who would like to know more about James Clayton should click here.
Papers
The other area is quite an innovation – and an area we wish to develop. This is for Practical Papers in Engineering. These are not original reports of research nor scholarly reviews, but papers based on practical experience. Past-presidents (Hence the name, The Presidents’ Choice) take the responsibility for assessing the papers on two simple criteria: technical competence and likely usefulness. If you would like to have a paper considered for this section, then you can easily find out how to submit a paper.
We hope that all engineers will find this a valuable resource. While, as I have said, these papers are free to access, there are Terms and Conditions on use and a disclaimer on responsibility which you should read before delving into The Presidents’ Choice.
Any questions or comment should be sent to: presidentschoice@imeche.org.uk
Bill Banks.
President, IMechE