Machine-Shop Engineering Roots of Taylorism: The Efficiency of Machine-Tools and Machinists, 1865–1884

Abstract

In 1903, Frederick W. Taylor, one of the pioneers of science-based shop management, wrote that “There is a close analogy between the methods of modern engineering and this type of management” (Taylor, 1903:66). The analogy he referred to was in fact between the improvement of the efficiency of labor and the improvement of the efficiency of machine-tools in mechanical engineering shops; for, underlying his innovative ideas in management were the technical methods the economic concerns, and even the cultural values of science based mechanical engineering of the mid-to-late nineteenth century. Taylor’s essential methods and ideas derive from the mentality of the machine shop, from his workplace and its engineering theory and practice in the years before the period 1880 – 1884 when he conducted his first metal cutting and stopwatch time-studies. During those years and earlier, advanced American machine-tool engineering manufacturers had promoted the rationalization of machines to make them more efficient and more profitable. These machine-tool engineers, proprietors of industries and employers of machinists in shops, led the movement for the application of scientific methods to mechanical engineering as opposed to older rule of thumb methods.