Nathaniel Bowditch and the power of numbers
Subtitle: how a nineteenth-century man of business, science, and the sea changed American life
By: Tamara Plakins Thornton
Publisher: University of North Carolina Press
Published: 2016
Language: eng
Number of pages: 402
ISBN-13: 9781469626932
Subjects: Astronomers; Mathematicians; Industrial organization; Biography; History
Description: "Nathaniel Bowditch (1773-1838), a mathematician, astronomer, and insurance executive--and a major agent of Enlightenment-era change ... took his personal work habits and blended them with the certainty and predictability of the science that he studied, creating something completely new for his time: the impersonal bureaucracy. Enthralled with the precision and certainty of numbers and the unerring regularity of the physical universe, Bowditch shaped some of New England's most powerful institutions, from financial corporations to Harvard College, into clockwork mechanisms. He ran his insurance company with rule-bound regularity, implementing systematic and novel paperwork procedures, methodical bookkeeping practices, and standardized filing systems, helping to usher in a new era of intellectual history"--
Notes: Includes bibliographical references (pages 323-373) and index.
Table of contents: title: Born into Salem; title: Parts unknown; title: the Navigator; title: Gentleman actuary; title: Celestial events; title: The prudent man; title: The clockwork corporation; title: Harvard and other imperfect mechanisms; title: Apogee; title: Final reckonings.