Order of the Engineer. As early as the 1950s, some Ohio engineers began to look into extending the Canadian Iron Ring Ceremony into the United States; however, it was not until 1970 that the first American ring ceremony was held at Cleveland State University. Local chapters of the Order of the Engineer, known as Links, began to form, first around Ohio, but then increasingly throughout the country. The movement has continued to spread, but the practice of American engineers wearing a stainless steel pinkie ring has not grown to nearly the extent that Canadian engineers wear their iron (now also mostly stainless steel) rings. See Homer T. Borton, “The Order of the Engineer,” The Bent of Tau Beta Pi, Spring 1978, pp. 35–37; “The Iron Ring,” American Scientist, May–June 1995, pp. 229–232; To Forgive Design: Understanding Failure (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, forthcoming), chapter 8.

The pledge taken by engineers at the time of their induction into the American Order of the Engineer is known as the “Obligation of an Engineer.” It was modeled after that of the Canadian iron ring tradition and appeared on early membership certificates as follows: