FIRST was founded in 1989 as a non profit organization that promotes engineering, science and research among young people and motivates them to pursue these subjects while building their self confidence, knowledge and life skills.

Every year, thousands of young minds compete at the FIRST Championship. The largest and most prestigious competition of it's kind. FIRST or For Insparation and Recognition of Science and Technology, was founded by Inventer Dean Kamen to inspire young people's interest and participation in sciene and thechnology.

"The problem is that so many kids grow up in an envirernment where by the time they are 10 and 12 years old, they think their options in the world are being in the NBA or being in Hollywood.That's their perspective of the world. It seemed to me that what we needed to do to get FIRST going was to break the stereotypical mindset given to kids about what's important in their culture."