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Author Thornton, Tamara Plakins, 1957- author.

Title Nathaniel Bowditch and the power of numbers : how a nineteenth-century man of business, science, and the sea changed American life / Tamara Plakins Thornton
Published Chapel Hill : The University of North Carolina Press, [2016]
©2016

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Description 1 online resource
Contents Born into Salem -- Parts unknown -- The navigator -- Gentleman actuary -- Celestial events -- The prudent man -- The clockwork corporation -- Harvard and other imperfect mechanisms -- Apogee -- Final reckonings
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
Bibliography Includes bibliographical references and index
Notes Print version record
Subject Bowditch, Nathaniel, 1773-1838.
SUBJECT Bowditch, Nathaniel, 1773-1838
Bowditch, Nathaniel, 1773-1838 fast
Subject Astronomers -- United States -- Biography
Mathematicians -- United States -- Biography
Industrial organization -- United States -- History
BIOGRAPHY & AUTOBIOGRAPHY -- Science & Technology.
MATHEMATICS -- Essays.
MATHEMATICS -- Pre-Calculus.
MATHEMATICS -- Reference.
HISTORY -- Military -- Naval.
Astronomers
Industrial organization
Mathematicians
United States
Genre/Form Electronic books
Biographies
History
Biographies.
Biographies.
Form Electronic book
ISBN 9781469628110
1469628112
9781469626949
1469626942