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When Phi Beta Kappa sought to restrict its membership to liberal arts in the late 19th century, Edward H. Williams Jr., a member of Phi Beta Kappa and head of the mining department at Lehigh University, formulated the idea of an honor society for those studying technical subjects. Irving Andrew Heikes, the valedictorian of his class at Lehigh was inducted as the first student member of Tau Beta Pi, at the Pennsylvania Alpha chapter on June 15, 1885.
In 1892 a second chapter was established at Michigan State University. Since then it has grown to over 225 student chapters across the United States. Tau Beta Pi was a founding member of the Association of College Honor Societies . The national headquarters of Tau Beta Pi are currently located in Knoxville, Tennessee on the campus of the University of Tennessee.
In 1974 the Sigma Tau fraternity merged with Tau Beta Pi. Sigma Tau was an honor society for engineering much like Tau Beta Pi, except it initiated female engineers as well as maleThe word male has the following meanings: In biology, it refers to one half of a heterogamous reproduction system, where the female is the other half. The male sex comprises those organisms that produce sperm cells (which is defined as the smaller gamete) engineers, whereas Tau Beta Pi's membership was restricted to men only (although TBP did award a women's badge to exceptional female engineers). With the merger, Tau Beta Pi began offering full membership to females.
The colors of Tau Beta Pi are seal brownBrown is a color produced by mixing small intensities of red and green, orange and blue, or yellow and purple pigment. Brown exists as a color perception only in the presence of a brighter color contrast. An example of a brown color in the RGB color space and whiteAlternate meanings: White (disambiguation White is a color (more accurately it contains all the colors of the spectrum and is sometimes described as an achromatic color— black is the absence of color) that has high brightness but zero hue. The impression, which are the school colors of Lehigh. The official badge is a watch key in the shape of the bent of a trestle. Originally the keys could be used to wind watches, but modern keys cannot, mainly because of the current lack of watches that require keys to wind.
Members initiated as undergraduate students must be junior-level (3rd year) students in the upper eighth of their engineering class, in terms of grades, or in the upper fifth of their class if they are senior-level (4th year). Graduate students can join, as well as others who have had a large impact on engineering and society through engineering.
Tau Beta Pi's membership includes some famous figures in engineering and technology, including: