Many cliometricians date the birth of the field to the 1957 joint sessions of the Economic History Association and the NBER Conference on Income and Wealth held in Williamstown, Massachusetts. Papers presented there introduced the use of methodologies that were considered revolutionary -- and which subsequently became standard Cliometric practice. Three years later, in 1960, Lance Davis and J.R.T. Hughes organized a conference for the small group of scholars pioneering the practice of these new methods.
This initial meeting evolved into an annual conference held at Purdue University throughout the decade, attended by a growing number of Cliometricians. By 1964, the "Founding Fathers" ignited national interest in this new field with their session at the American Economic Association meeting in Chicago, attended by hundreds. In 1969, the Conference moved from Purdue to the University of Wisconsin, and again in 1975, to the University of Chicago. Since 1980, the Conference has moved around the country. It is hosted by a different university each year.
In 2009 the Board of Trustees established procedures for the election of Fellows of the Cliometric Society. The Cliometric Society will begin to honor outstanding scholarship in the field of economic history through its election of Fellows of the Society in 2010. Each year Fellows will be elected on the basis of their contributions to the field of economic history. Fellows must have published contributions to the field that are markedly original and have significantly advanced the frontiers of knowledge.