World Industrialization

51850–1914 or the New Shared Inventions and the Birth of the Modern Large Company

Covering less than 60 years, this third period saw the emergence of the new organization of large modern companies, from Singer’s sewing machine to the Ford “Model T” by way of the slaughterhouses of Chicago, a new organization that dominated the American economy between 1850 and 1914 and spread very quickly in most countries.

5.1. The invention of the modern large company

Reflections on the organization of work and factories began in the 17th Century with Sébastien Le Prestre, Marquis de Vauban, conducting experiments with records of working time during the earthworks carried out in Strasbourg (1668), in order to determine how much daily work could be humanely requested of earthmovers and wheelbarrow draggers and, at the same time, the level of their bonus salary. Bernard Forest de Bélidor, a military engineer (and inventor of the concept of the sine wave), did the same in 1750 by determining basic actions and times in the context of military constructions on piles.

A step was taken at the beginning of the 19th Century by Emiland Marie Gauthey (the inventor of the first language of universal graphic signs, the forefather of stenography) who, obsessed with standardization, measured in hundredths and thousandths of an hour the realization of what he called the elements of work or simple tasks during road construction.

These reflections reappeared and were extended to the organization of companies ...