"To transform our culture by creating a world where science and technology are celebrated and where young people dream of becoming science and technology heroes."
-Dean Kamen, Founder

FIRST is an acronym for "For Inspiration and Recognition of Science and Technology". FIRST is a non-profit organization aimed at inspiring young peoples interest in science and technology. It was founded in 1989 by inventor Dean Kamen. The first FIRST competition was held in a small high school gymnasium with just 28 teams. FIRST, over the four different competition levels, has now grown to over 19,000 teams worldwide.

FIRST's mission is to inspire young people to be science and technology leaders, by engaging them in exciting mentor-based programs that build science, engineering and technology skills, that inspire innovation, and that foster well-rounded life capabilities including self-confidence, communication, and leadership.

FIRST is divided into four different competition levels: FIRST Robotics Competition (FRC), FIRST Tech Challenge (FTC), FIRST Lego League (FLL), and Jr. FIRST Lego League (JR. FLL). FRC is aimed for high school students and allows them to solve problems to complete a certain task. This is the competition level that Team 1596-The Instigators competes in. FTC is a smaller and more cost efficient high school level of FIRST. FLL is a competition for students in fourth through eighth grades. These students make robots out of Legos using the Lego Mindstorms NXT kit. JR. FLL uses the same Lego kits that are given to the FLL teams, but these teams are kindergarten through third grade. JR. FLL has the same challenge as the FLL teams, but do not compete against each other.

All together through all four programs of FIRST, there are more than 19,334 teams; 214,000 students; 17,834 robots; 57,576 mentors; 34,000 event volunteers. The combination of all these numbers provides a fun, sport-like event that is inspirational, and most importantly, educational to the students.