AIME was founded in 1871 on May 16th at the Wyoming Valley Hotel on River Street in Wilkes-Barre, Pennsylvania. The institute was born from the idea of 22 mining engineers to preserve and share the collective knowledge and experiences of similar professionals for the benefit of future engineers. The founders of the institute recognized the critical need to interchange ideas and knowledge to produce the best engineering ad technology possible. This idea and the society's creation promoted discovery and advancement during the early growth and expansion of the mining and metal industry.

Edmund C. Pechin, one of the first members of AIME, expresses the institute's mission to further scientific discovery through his declaration. "The time has come when scientific research is to assume its true position-the day of 'sheer force and blind stupidity,' whose only protection is a high tariff, has gone forever . . . the physicist, the geologist, and mineralogist; the chemist, the engineer, are as essential to success as the [blast] furnace itself . . . There is no merely practical man, no matter how varied may have been his experience, or how long his practice, that will not benefit from the results of scientific investigation."

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