Charles Day (1879-1931)
Charles Day (May 15, 1879 - May 10, 1931) was an American electrical, construction and consulting engineer, and co-founder of Day & Zimmermann. He is known as a specialist in public utility management and operation, and for his seminal contributions to flow charts and the routing diagram. Biography. Youth, education and early career. Day was born in 1879 in Germantown, Philadelphia, son of Charles A. Day and Frances Corson Day. He attended Germantown Academy, where he met his future business partner Kern Dodge, son of James Mapes Dodge. After graduation he entered the University of Pennsylvania, where  he received his BS in 1899 in Electrical Engineering. Thereafter in 1901 he obtained his Master of Engineering in 1901. After obtaining his master's degree, Day was superintendent of installation of power-plant equipment and transmission machinery at the 1899 Philadelphia Export Exposition, where James Mapes Dodge had served on the exhibition commission. At its close, 31 November 1899, Day entered the employ of Link Belt Engineering Co. in Nicetown–Tioga where James Mapes Dodge was president. He started out as assistant to superintendent and became engineer of works, working on modernizing the plant. Dodge himself would become one  of the promoters of scientific management, and Day would follow into those footsteps. One decade later a 1911 article in "The American Magazine" would present Day as one of a dozen frontmen of scientific management. Career as construction and consulting engineer. After Day's friend Kern Dodge obtained his BS in mechanical engineering at Drexel Institute in 1901, the two of them founded the company Dodge & Day, specializing in engineering, shop equipment and management. One of their first employees was Conrad N. Lauer. Later, the scope of the organization was enlarged to include a great deal of engineering and construction  work in both the industrial and public-service fields. In 1907, another former classmate John Zimmerman joined the firm as partner, and they renamed the firm Dodge, Day & Zimmermann. After Kern Dodge withdrew as partner in 1911, the firm became Day & Zimmermann, incorporated in 1916, and still exists today. One of the associates in the consulting firm of Charles Day was Walter Polakov from 1912 to 1915, who had joined Gantt's consulting firm in 1915, and started his own firm in 1915. In World War I Day served on the United States Shipping Board in its Emergency Fleet Corporation . He wrote a series of lectures for the Harvard Business School, and was a trustee of the University of Pennsylvania. Day was an active member of the American Society of Mechanical Engineers; member of the Board of Managers and chairman of the mechanical engineering section of the Franklin Institute, associate member of the American Institute of Electrical Engineers, now IEEE; member of the former New York Electrical Society; member of the Engineers Club of Philadelphia, and Engineers' Club; and member of the Machinery Club, New York. Death. Still chairman of the board of Day & Zimmermann, Inc., Charles Day died May  10, 1931 in the University Hospital, Philadelphia after an illness of ten days at the age of fifty-three. Work. Educated at first in Electrical Engineering, Day's work developed into the fields of mechanical, construction, civil and management engineering. It is not without reason his biographer Taylor, H. Birchard (1953) named him a "Symbol of American Industrial Genius." In the mentioned 1911 article in "The American Magazine" by Frederick Winslow Taylor, Day was presented as "Charles P. Day of Philadelphia, an efficiency engineer, who adopted Scientific Management to the construction of factories and manufacturing plants." For the design of  manufacturing plants and civil works, Day co-founded his own engineering firm that still exists today. Day did more than just adopt ideas, and brought them into practice. He developed one or two innovative graphical techniques, and with that contributed to the graphic history of scientific management. Day & Zimmermann. In 1901 Day and Kern Dodge laid the foundation for the engineering company Day & Zimmermann. According to American Society of Civil Engineers (1975) the two founders both had in common, that they "dreamed of a new and revolutionary business: Modernizing Engineering... [However] in those early days their assets were a modest  shed building, high hopes and a good idea. They had no clients." The story how it all started, has been told: One of the first notable engineering accomplishments of the Day & Zimmermann company was the design of the construction of the Gatun Lock System, one of the Panama Canal locks in 1907. The construction of the Gatun Lock began with the first concrete laid at Gatun, on August 24, 1909, by the Philadelphia-based company Day, Dodge & Zimmermann. In these early days the company did some graphic design as well. It was contacted by the Hershey chocolate company to produce  the foil wrapper for Hershey's Kisses. Section::::"The Machine Shop Problem," 1903. In the 1903 paper entitled "The Machine Shop Problem" in the "Transactions of the American Society of Mechanical Engineers", Day presented a method for the analysis and organization design of machine shops based on the Taylor System. The first subject of discussion was the subdivision of the departments of a machine shop. For this matter a general subdivision and a further subdivision can be made. The following topics of discussion were the means of attaining economical production in the machine shop, the Question of Power Application with Courses  to fulfill the conditions, and the advantages derived from the use of individual motors on machine tools. The last topic was the graphical distribution of costs, showing cost value of operations. Routing diagram. The 1909 article in the "Engineering Magazine" entitled "The routing diagram as a basis for laying out industrial plants" proposed a new type of graphic illustration of the material flow through industrial plants, named the routing diagram. The first presentation itself had the following intention: The graphic method presented consisted of two types of routing diagram, a "perspective routing diagram" and a "detail routing diagram," combined with  an exterior view. The article itself gives as an example the design of a gasoline automobile factory. The given graphics deliver complementary views with: These views were illustrated with the following three images: Despite this clear presentation, neither Charles Day nor anybody else is generally credited for making a seminal contribution to the routing diagram or route diagram. For example, in one of the first seminal works in the field, the 1923 book "Industrial Management" by Richard H. Lansburgh, there is a separate chapter "Factory Building and Plant Lay out." This chapter discussed the matter with the similar three types  of views, and some more, without any reference to the work of Charles Day. Instead of "perspective routing diagram", Lansburgh speaks of "vertical layout", and the "detail routing diagram" is named a "flow chart." With the articles of Wrege (1978), Wrege (1999) and others, there is a re-evaluation of these contributions. For example, the "AA Files" (2005, p. 50) summarized that: Day was not the first to introduce the concept of routing diagrams. For example, James Bray Griffith in his 1905 book "Systematizing" already contained a section on "Charting factory layout and routing" which contained two simplified routing diagrams  for handling lumber, that he called "arrangements." Another contemporary, Oscar E. Perrigo, published on the design of machine shops in his "Modern machine shop" (1906), looking at machine shop lay out and arrangements of machinery. In contrast to this work, Day did take this design problem to a next level by putting the dynamic interaction first. Management of Navy yards. In 1911 Charles Day worked together with Henry Gantt and Harrington Emerson to study the management of Navy yards, which didn't work out right. Wren (2009) summarized that "their efforts went for naught when, following the Interstate Commerce Commission  hearings in late 1911, the Secretary of the Navy announced that he would never allow scientific management to be applied in the nation’s shipyards." The breakthrough happened in the same period, as Wren (2009) further explained: The developments set in motion in those days did pave the way to the realization of Gantt charts. Reception. Early charts of information flow. In June 1903 Charles Day had presented a paper entitled "The Machine Shop Problem" as described above, in which he proposed a number of charts to be used in management. This paper was first presented at the Saratoga meeting  of the American Society of Mechanical Engineers (ASME). Day, by then still a junior ASME member, had presented his paper to an audience with among others Frederick Winslow Taylor, Henry Gantt and John Calder commenting on his ideas. It was John Calder (1903) who commented: For management historian Charles D. Wrege the work by Day and Calder were some of the earliest presenting charts of information flow. Wrege et al. (1999) summarized: There is no question one of the charts presented by Day is a network; charts that outline information flows were only presented by Calder. Day presented two organizational  charts, and four more or less classification charts or concept maps. Furthermore, Wrege et al. (1999) mentioned how the story continued: For Wrege this was an example of "What we do not know about management history," because "their eventual fate and how they became incorporated into management information systems literature is still a mystery..." Personal remembrance. In a 1931 appreciation the "Electrical World T & D" had the following summary of his reputation and accomplishments: On a more personal level H. Birchard Taylor (1952) in the first Charles Day lecture remembered: Taylor further expressed Day's experience in scientific management since  the early 1900s, and particularly his dealings with the Navy during World War I. In remembrance of his name, the Newcomen Society in North America has held an annual Charles Day lecture for decades.