ABSTRACT
Mathematician, scientist and economist, Charles Babbage is hailed as the inventor of the modern computer. That alone has earned him a place in the management hall of fame. Much of what we now do in management relies utterly on Babbage’s invention, so much so that often we cannot remember how things were done in the pre-computer age. But also, far ahead of his time, Babbage argued that business should be conducted according to scientifically based principles, and that science had an important role to play in the management of business enterprises. Thus historians of management consider him to be a forerunner of the scientific management movement, which began in the USA two decades after Babbage’s death.
