[4] Founded by Dean Kamen and Woodie Flowers in 1989, its expressed goal is to develop ways to inspire students in engineering and technology fields.

FIRST also operates FIRST Place, a research facility at FIRST Headquarters in Manchester, New Hampshire, where it holds educational programs and day camps for students and teachers.

Day-to-day operations are run by a senior management team, consisting of a CEO and a variety of vice presidents and additional officers for a total of 10 individuals.

[8] As of 2019[update], over 3,700 high school teams totaling over 46,000 students from Australia, Brazil, Canada, France, Turkey, Israel, Mexico, the Netherlands, the United States, the United Kingdom,[1] and more compete in the annual competition, with more than 9000 teams (active and inactive) in existence.

[9] In 2011, teams participated in 48 regional and district competitions[10][11] throughout March in an effort to qualify for the FIRST Championship in St. Louis in April.

Previous years' Championships have been held in Atlanta, Georgia, Houston, Texas and at Walt Disney World's Epcot.

[14] The 2005 FVC pilot season featured a demonstration of the FIRST Vex Challenge using a 1/3 linear scale mock-up of the 2004 FIRST Robotics Competition, FIRST Frenzy: Raising the Bar.

For their 2005-2006 Pilot Season, FVC teams played the Half-Pipe Hustle game using racquet balls and ramps.

In addition, students were allowed to use either MIT App Inventor or Android Studio (Java language) to program their robots.

The combination of interchangeable LEGO parts, computer 'bricks', sensors, and the aforementioned software, provide preteens and teenagers with the capability to build simple models of real-life robotic systems.

[19] This competition also utilizes a research element that is themed with each year's game, and deals with a real-world situation for students to learn about through the season.

Unveiled in 2019, FIRST LEGO League Discover is designed for children ages 4 to 6 and centers on a playful introduction to STEM concepts and ideas.

[24] At the 2014 Championship, FIRST announced changes to the 2015 structure that will bring a more "Olympic Village" feeling, and involves a rearrangement of the programs around the city.

The term "Gracious Professionalism" was created by Dr. Woodie Flowers, former FIRST National Advisor and Pappalardo Professor Emeritus of Mechanical Engineering, Massachusetts Institute of Technology.

Major donors include BAE Systems, Google, Raytheon, Apple Inc., NASA and National Instruments.

Each year during his speech at the kickoff event, founder Dean Kamen gives the student participants a homework assignment.

[30] One goal of this registration process was to provide FIRST with data to demonstrate that many people had benefited from their experiences in FIRST robotics and to encourage more funding of robotics-related events.

Undersecretary of Commerce and Director of the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office Jon Dudas was selected to be the President of FIRST.

In 2018, the first episode of season five of STEM in 30, the National Air and Space Museum's television show for middle school students, featured FIRST.

FIRST seeks to promote a philosophy of teamwork and collaboration among engineers and encourages competing teams to remain friendly, helping each other out when necessary.

[34] The concept of Gracious Professionalism grew from a robotics class that Flowers taught at Massachusetts Institute of Technology.