Society was fascinated by science and scientific things in the nineteenth century. Great breakthroughs in engineering, the use of steam power, and electricity were there for all to see, enjoy, and suffer. Science was fashionable and it is not surprising that, during this great period of industrial development, scientific methods should be applied to the activities of man--particularly to those involved in the processes of production. To wards the end of the nineteenth century international competition began to make itself felt. The three industrial giants of the day, Germany, America, and Great Britain, began to find that them was a limit of the purchasing power of the previously apparently inexhaustible markets. Science and competition therefore provided the means and the need to improve industrial efficiency.
Frederick Winslow Taylor is generally acknowledged as being the father of the scientific management approach, as a result of the publication of his book. The Principles of Scientific Management was published in 1911. However, numerous other academies and practitioners had been actively applying such approaches since the beginning of the century. Charles Babbage, an English academic, well-known for his invention of the mechanical computer (with the aid of a government grant as long as 1820) applied himself to the costing of processes, using scientific methods, and indeed might well be recognized as one of the fathers of cost accounting.
Taylor was of well-to-do background and received an excellent education but, partly owing to troubles with his eyesight, decided to become an engineering apprentice. He spent some twenty-five years in the tough, sometimes brutal, environment of the US steel industry and carefully studied methods of work when he eventually attained supervisory status. He made various significant innovations in the area of steel processing, but his claim to fame is through his application of methods of science to methods of work, and his personal efforts that proved they could succeed in a hostile environment.
In 1901, Taylor left the steel industry and spent the rest of his life trying to promote the principles of man aging scientifically and emphasizing the human aspects of the method, over the slave-driving methods common in his day. He died in 1915, leaving a huge school of followers to promote his approach worldwide.
Charles Babbage, an English academic, ______.