The document provides an overview of the finite element method (FEM) including its history, basic steps, and direct formulation approach. It describes how FEM was developed in the 1950s for aerospace applications and became widely used after the 1960s. The key steps are discretizing the domain, deriving element equations, assembling to obtain whole problem equations, applying boundary conditions, solving, and post-processing results. Direct formulation relates applied forces to displacements using element stiffness matrices which are assembled into a global matrix to solve for unknown displacements. Examples show applying this to simple structural problems.