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Bestseller
BestsellerE-book
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.

Publication Info. Chapel Hill : The University of North Carolina Press, [2016]
©2016

Item Status

Description 1 online resource
Physical Medium polychrome
Description text file
Bibliography Includes bibliographical references and index.
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.
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.
Processing Action EBL dda UPB
Local Note eBooks on EBSCOhost EBSCO eBook Subscription Academic Collection - North America
Subject Bowditch, Nathaniel, 1773-1838.
Bowditch, Nathaniel, 1773-1838.
Astronomers -- United States -- Biography.
Astronomers.
United States.
Genre/Form Biographies.
Subject Mathematicians -- United States -- Biography.
Mathematicians.
Industrial organization -- United States -- History.
Industrial organization.
History.
Genre/Form Electronic books.
History.
Biographies.
Other Form: Print version: Thornton, Tamara Plakins, 1957- Nathaniel Bowditch and the power of numbers 9781469626932 (DLC) 2015032057 (OCoLC)919252679
ISBN 9781469628110 (electronic book)
1469628112 (electronic book)
9781469626949 (ebook)
1469626942 (ebook)
9781469626932
1469626934