Welcome to our series of blogs where we delve into our historical membership proposal forms to learn more about some of our past members.
Our historical membership proposal forms consist of the application forms completed by individuals when they applied to a class of IMechE membership. We often hold more than one form for each individual as they moved between membership grades at different points of their careers.
They include details of an individual’s general and technical education, apprenticeship and employment history up to the date that the application was made. They provide a snippet into an engineer’s career and professional connections and indicate how engineering companies worked and were connected.
This series will be using information from these forms to discover and highlight stories of engineers.
Our historic membership records for individuals who joined the Institution between 1847 and 1938 can be accessed via the family history website Ancestry. More information about access to Ancestry for IMechE members and non-members can be found here: https://www.imeche.org/library-archive/archive-and-artefacts/archive-overview
Discover more about the information available about our historic members in our blog post about the history of the Institution’s membership forms: https://imechearchive.wordpress.com/2020/10/26/a-history-of-the-institutions-membership-forms/
Richard Ross Soga
Richard Ross Soga was born in South Africa in 1898. Soga was the grandson of Tiyo Soga, the first black South African to be ordained.
Like his father and grandfather before him Soga received some of his education in Scotland having first been tutored privately in South Africa between 1904 and 1913.
Soga’s education, like that of many, was interrupted by the First World War. In 1917, aged 18, he was commissioned as a 2nd Lieutenant into the Rifle Brigade seeing active service in France.
Soga’s relationship with the military and with military engineering continued after the cessation of hostilities in the First World War as he joined the territorial forces in the 1920s.
In 1920 Soga commenced a BSc in Engineering at Glasgow University. He combined his academic education with practical apprentice experience by undertaking placements both before commencing his studies at Glasgow and during the summer breaks.
Upon completion of his practical placements and having gained his BSc in Engineering, Soga took a position as a draughtman in the crane and conveyor drawing office of Babcock and Wilcox in Glasgow.
Soga remained with Babcock and Wilcox until 1931 when he moved to the Scottish Boiler and General Insurance Company as their Surveyor of Cranes, Engines and other mechanical plant.
In 1933 Soga successfully applied to become an Associate Member of IMechE.
When asked to provide “details of most important Mechanical Engineering work” for which he has been personally responsible, Soga’s response was:
“Calculations and Tests of Cranes under Home Office regulations.”
In 1937 Soga made an application to transfer from an Associate Member to a Member however a decision of “no motion” was made on his application. The reason for this is unknown and Soga did not make any further attempts to transfer to become a Member.
Soga resigned his membership in 1957 and died in 1961.
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