Peter Strevens, the Chair in Applied Linguistics at the University of Essex first had the idea to start BAAL. At a meeting at Birkbeck College in July 1965, the original idea for BAAL was to study mainly language teaching and machine translation. However, at the first full meeting in 1967 in Reading, Berkshire the group decided to study many different topics. BAAL became the UK member of AILA, and Pit Corder was its first Chair. At first, membership was only for academics because BAAL wanted people to think it was a group of experts, not a teachers' meeting. However, by the early 1970s it became easier to join BAAL. Since 1985, anyone can join. There are no requirements to become a member. In 1980, the Association began to publish a journal called, "Applied Linguistics".