Bibliograph

Nathaniel Bowditch and the power of numbers, how a nineteenth-century man of business, science, and the sea changed American life, Tamara Plakins Thornton

Type

Label

Nathaniel Bowditch and the power of numbers, how a nineteenth-century man of business, science, and the sea changed American life, Tamara Plakins Thornton

Language

eng

Bibliography note

Includes bibliographical references (pages 323-373) and index

resource.biographical

individual biography

resource.governmentPublication

government publication of a state province territory dependency etc

Illustrations

illustrations

Index

index present

Literary Form

non fiction

Main title

Nathaniel Bowditch and the power of numbers

Nature of contents

bibliography

Oclc number

919252679

Responsibility statement

Tamara Plakins Thornton

Sub title

how a nineteenth-century man of business, science, and the sea changed American life

Summary

"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"--, Provided by publisher

Classification