In the first place, they never dealt with the public. In the third place, the motives of the loudest advocates of extended licensing appeared to be somewhat less than purely altruistic. I expressed these feelings in testimony before a special legislative committee, thereby earning the opprobrium of professors at a central Florida university who were making a good thing of P.E. exam preparatory courses. Arrival of the government-shrinking philosophy of the first Reagan administration killed the movement. The superior way to protect the naive public from faulty engineering design of manufactured products is by certification of the products, not by certification of the designers.
Government does that with civil aircraft, for example.
The product liability philosophy, which arose in the last half-century, is the greatest incentive to careful design and test. That incentive should not be weakened by so-called tort reform. A recent letter followed the line that maybe the engineer doesn't need registration now, but if he is downsized or axed in a merger, then the registration will help him get a new job. A registered mechanical engineer without specific control systems engineering training and experience is not qualified to do work in this specialized field. I have not needed to be registered in this field, nor have I needed to be an ASME member for 59 years.