Joining nations 1947-1990

16

JOINING NATIONS

- a position which he held until he was elected President in 1960. Unhappily he died in office in 1962. Unlike his colleagues on the first Executive Council, the Secretary General, Guy Parsloe, was not an engineer but a historian. His early career had been devoted to historical research at London University but during the Second World War he was appointed Secretary of the (British) Institute of Welding and was thus largely responsible for organising the conference in London in 1947 at which the principle of the creation of the IIW was agreed. He was then primarily respon– sible for drawing up the Institute's constitution and for introducing the administrative mechanisms which ensured the relatively smooth development of the IIW throughout its early years. Guy Parsloe was particularly interested in the dissemination of information and was thus a strong advocate of the Institute's involvement in documentation and terminology which attracted little support from the majority of engineers. Equally, he was much concerned with the arrangements for the publication of the IIW's work and developed the policy, maintained throughout the life of the Institute, under which the mem– ber societies have the opportunity to act as publisher of IIW books of particular interest to them. This policy was, however, thought to be inappropriate for the IIW's journal Welding in the World; when it wa3

G Parsloe, United Kingdom, Secretary General, 1948.