Scientific Management by F.W. Taylor ( BIOGRAPHY )

                                                                     Biography

* Taylor was born in 1856 to a wealthy Quaker family in Germantown, Philadelphia, Pennsylvania.

Educated early by his mother, Taylor studied for two years in France and Germany and traveled Europe for 18 months. In 1872, he entered Phillips Exeter Academy in Exeter, New Hampshire.

Upon graduation, Taylor was accepted at Harvard Law. However, due to rapidly deteriorating eyesight, Taylor had to consider an alternative career. After the depression of 1873, Taylor became an industrial apprentice patternmaker, gaining shop-floor experience at a pump-manufacturing company, Enterprise Hydraulic Works, in Philadelphia. Taylor's career progressed in 1878 when he became a machine shop laborer at Midvale Steel Works. At Midvale, Taylor was promoted to gang-boss, foreman, research director, and finally chief engineer of the works. Taylor became a student of Stevens Institute of Technology, studying via correspondence and obtaining a degree in mechanical engineering in 1883. On May 3, 1884, he married Louise M. Spooner of Philadelphia.