Frederick Winslow Taylor

Frederick Winslow Taylor (1856–1915) was an American mechanical engineer who founded the movement he called scientific management. Son of a wealthy Philadelphia family, he gave up Harvard to apprentice as a machinist and rose through the Midvale Steel Company, where he began timing workers with a stopwatch to find the most efficient way to perform each task. As a consultant at Bethlehem Steel and elsewhere he developed time study, standardized tools and incentive pay, and patented improvements in high-speed steel cutting. His book The Principles of Scientific Management, published in 1911, made Taylorism a worldwide influence and a target for labor unions. He was also a champion tennis player.