Technology and Societies
By Henry Petroski
A brief history of honor societies
This Article From Issue
March-April 1998
Volume 86, Number 2
Page 118
DOI: 10.1511/1998.21.118
The honor society Phi Beta Kappa was founded as a social and literary group at the College of William and Mary in 1776. Within five years, branches had been established at Yale and at Harvard, which took control of the organization after the disbanding in 1781 of the society at the school of its origin. In 1787, a branch of Phi Beta Kappa was established at Dartmouth, and the three New England institutions guided the fraternity's early development. In particular, they agreed that no further branches were to be approved unless all existing branches concurred. There was not another branch established for 30 years, when one at Union College was formed in 1817.
From Hardesty & Hanover, One Hundred Years of Bridge Engineering
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