On the Economy of Machinery and Manufacturers.
London: Charles Knight, 1832. First edition, a very rare large paper copy, of Babbage’s pioneering work of political economy, "a remarkable performance of a remarkable man" (Schumpeter, p. 541), and “a turning point in economic writing” (ODNB). “Babbage undertook the analysis of machinery and manufacturing processes to discover ideas and techniques that could be applied to the construction of his Difference Engine no. 1, which he knew would stretch the available mechanical technology to its limits. Primary themes of the book were the division of labor and the division of mental labor, to which Babbage devoted chapters 19 and 20. His chapter on the division of mental labor was an analysis of the methods used by de Prony in the production of his celebrated mathematical tables. Babbage had seen de Prony’s manuscript table in 1819, and around 1820 began planning the Difference Engine no. 1 based on the principles of division of labor. With this goal, Babbage visited factories throughout England, inspecting every machine and every industrial process. Rather than a study limited to engineering and manufacturing techniques, his book turned out to be an analysis of manufacturing processes within their economic context. Written when manufacturing was undergoing rapid development and radical change, the book represents an original contribution to British economics. On the economy of machinery and manufacturers was also the first book on operations research, discussing topics like the regulation of power, control of raw materials, division of labor, times studies, the advantage of size in manufacturing, inventory control, and duration and replacement of machinery. On pages 166 and 167 Babbage analyzed the production of his book as an example of the cost of each step in a particular production process. The work was Babbage’s most complete and professional piece of writing, and the only one of his books that went through four editions in his lifetime” (OOC). “The first edition of On the economy of machinery and manufacturers was issued in two versions: a large-paper version, of which a small number were printed for presentation only; and the regular version of which three thousand copies were issued” (OOC). “The Economy of manufacturers established Babbage’s position as a political economist and its influence is well attested, particularly on John Stuart Mill and Karl Marx. Babbage’s pioneering discussion of the effect of technical development on the size of industrial organizations was followed by Mill and the prediction of the continuing increase in the size of factories, often cited as one of Marx’s successful economic predictions, in fact derives from Babbage’s analysis… Babbage wrote with many talents: a natural philosopher and mechanical engineer, his knowledge of factory and workshop practice was encyclopaedic; he was well-versed in relevant business practice; and he was without rival as a mathematician among contemporary British political economists (Hyman, pp. 103-4). ABPC/RBH list only one other large-paper copy. Provenance: Engraved book plate of Baron Hambro to front paste down, probably Carl Joachim Hambro (1807-77), Danish-born merchant banker. In 1832, Hambro moved to London and in 1839 established Hambros Bank there. During the 1850s he was responsible for arranging various British Government loan stock issues enabling the bank to prosper. He was made a Baron by King Frederik VII of Denmark in 1851. “Charles Babbage has recently been rediscovered as the ‘pioneer of the computer.’ He needs to be rediscovered a second time for his contribution to the understanding of economics, especially for his penetrating and original insights into the economic role played by technological change in the course of industrial development. Indeed, it is fair to say that it was Babbage's book which first introduced the factory into the realm of economic analysis … “Babbage's purpose in writing On the Economy of Machinery and Manufactures was to examine ‘the mechanical principles which regulate the application of machinery to arts and manufactures’ (p. iii). The book is invaluable for its detailed, nontechnical descriptions of the manufacturing technologies that were employed in English workshops at the beginning of the 1830s. Babbage had, himself, travelled extensively through the industrial districts of England as well as continental Europe. And he was, as we know from his other remarkable accomplishments, no casual observer … “The book is, in an important sense, a by-product of Babbage’s lifelong preoccupation with the development of a calculating machine. Indeed, the opening sentence of the preface to the first edition of the book states that: ‘The present volume may be considered as one of the consequences that have resulted from the Calculating-Engine, the construction of which I have been so long superintending.’ Thus, the book shares a common provenance with the calculating engine. The power of systematic reasoning that Babbage invested in his attempt to develop such a machine is abundantly evident in the ways in which he organizes and classifies his data on the English industrial establishment in this books. “This is particularly evident in chapter 11, ‘Of Copying,’ by far the longest chapter in the book. Babbage brings together in this chapter a wide array of industrial processes involving specific applications of printing, casting, moulding, engraving, stamping, punching, etc. The cheapness of machine operations in such processes turns upon the skill devoted to some original instrument or tool that subsequently may become the basis for many thousands of copies. The situation – involving the common denominator of a large fixed cost that lays the basis for cheap per-unit costs – is typical of the mass production technologies that were just beginning to emerge in Babbage's time … “Babbage’s observations and descriptions are so informative that his book is well worth reading today just for its contribution to the history of technology, even if it were totally devoid of any other merit. Babbage even provides the reader with a guide for extracting useful and reliable information concerning productivity from factory visits. The guide includes a suggested set of structured questions as well as some discreet methods of verifying the accuracy of responses by checking for the internal consistency of answers. He also offers suggestions: when reliable information on factory output is not available: ‘When this cannot be ascertained, the number of operations performed in a given time may frequently be counted when the workman is quite unconscious that any person is observing him. Thus the sound made by the motion of a loom may enable the observer to count the number of strokes per minute, even though he is outside the building in which it is contained’ (p. 117) … Babbage begins his critical chapter 19, ‘On the Division of Labour,’ by asserting that ‘Perhaps the most important principle on which the economy of a manufacture depends, is the division of labour [Babbage’s italics] amongst the persons who perform the work’ (p. 169). Babbage's most distinctive contributions to the discipline of economics are generally regarded as his contributions to this subject. That view will not be challenged. However, I will suggest that his analysis of the division of labor constitutes an advance upon the classic treatment of the subject of much greater dimensions than has yet been recognized. Indeed, Babbage himself, a man who did not suffer from excessive modesty, also understated the extent of his own improvement upon Adam Smith … “Years later, Babbage cogently restated his central point as follows: ‘The most effective cause of the cheapness produced by the division of labour is this: By dividing the work to be executed into different processes, each requiring different degrees of skill, or of force, the master manufacturer can purchase exactly that precise quantity of both which is necessary for each process. Whereas if the whole work were executed by one workman, that person must possess sufficient skill perform the most difficult, and sufficient strength to execute the most laborious, of those operations into which the art is divided …’ “This analysis of the benefits of an extensive division of labor was highly original. It did indeed constitute a major addition to Adam Smith’s formulation, and it was precisely this point that exercised a heavy influence upon later economists … “Babbage's discussion of the determinants of invention is far richer than that of Smith, and there is of course a perfectly straightforward reason. Smith, writing in the late 1760s and 1770s, was writing about, and commenting upon, a society that was still essentially pre-industrial. Babbage, on the other hand, wrote his book some sixty years later. The interval between the writing of the two books constituted the heyday of the British industrial revolution. Babbage is therefore analyzing a society where the division of labor had been carried to far greater lengths than the society that was known to Adam Smith. Indeed, very little of the descriptive accounts in Babbage's book, aside from the examples that Babbage deliberately chose from Smith’s own book, dealt with machinery that would have been recognizable to the author of the Wealth of Nations. “A central point for Babbage is that an extensive division of labor is itself an essential prerequisite to technical change. This is so for two related reasons. First of all, technical improvements are not generally dependent upon a few rarely gifted individuals, although the more "beautiful combinations" are indeed the work of the occasional genius (p. 260). Rather, and secondly, inventive activity needs to be seen as a consequence as well as a cause of the division of labor. This is so because "The arts of contriving, of drawing, and of executing, do not usually reside in their greatest perfection in one individual; and in this, as in other arts, the division of labour must be applied" (p. 266; emphasis Babbage's) … “Chapter 27 of Babbage's book, ‘On Contriving Machinery,’ provides valuable insights into the difficulties associated with the innovation process in the period when Britain was attaining the status of ‘Workshop of the World.’ Babbage expresses great concern over the difficulties of executing a new machine design and putting it into operating form in close accordance with the specifications of the inventor. This chapter clearly bears the painful imprint of the author’s numerous frustrating experiences in designing highly complex machines in an age when machine making was still a relatively primitive art … Babbage stresses in several places the importance of accuracy in the actual paper design of a new machine. ‘It can never,’ he states, ‘be too strongly impressed upon the minds of those who are devising new machines, that to make the most perfect drawings of every part tends essentially both to the success of the trial, and to economy in arriving at the result’ (p. 262). “Chapter 29, ‘On the Duration of Machinery,’ deals with what a later generation would call ‘technological obsolescence,’ especially as the problem applies to capital goods with long useful lives, ‘such as wind-mills, water-mills, and steam-engines’ (p. 283) … Babbage here offers a powerful insight that, its seems fair to say, is still not fully absorbed today. ‘Machinery for producing any commodity in great demand, seldom actually wears out; new improvements, by which the same operations can be executed either more quickly or better, generally superseding it long before that period arrives: indeed, to make such an improved machine profitable, it is usually reckoned that in five years it ought to have paid itself, and in ten to be superseded by a better’ (p.285) … “Chapter 20, ‘On the Division of Mental Labours,’ is a fascinating chapter for several reasons. It involves, to begin with, a direct application of Babbage’s reasoning on the division of labour in the previous chapter, to the specific realm of the activities of the human mind. Second, it contains an extensive discussion of Babbage’s own work on a ‘calculating engine,’ placed in the larger context of his analysis of the application of machine methods to industrial production. And, third, it provides an absorbing historical account of the project that culminated in Babbage's own efforts to develop a calculating-engine … [It was] Babbage’s view that mankind’s future prospects will be dominated by the fact that ‘machinery has been taught arithmetic’ (p. 390). Babbage was of course remarkably prescient, but the possibility of teaching machinery arithmetic would have to await the age of electronics … “Babbage provides the first extended discussion in the literature of economics of an issue of immense future significance: the economies associated with large-scale production. The chapter devoted to this topic, chapter 22, ‘On the Causes and Consequences of Large Factories,’ in turn powerfully influenced the treatment of this topic by two of the most influential, perhaps the two most influential economists of the nineteenth century, John Stuart Mill and Karl Marx … In order to produce at minimum cost, it will be necessary to expand the factory by some multiple whose size will depend upon the specific labor requirements imposed by the division of labor. It follows from the principle of the division of labor that ‘When the number of processes into which it is advantageous to divide it, and the number of individuals to be employed by it are ascertained, then all factories which do not employ a direct multiple of this latter number, will produce the article at a greater cost’ (p. 212; emphasis Babbage’s) … “Babbage's book, On the Economy of Machinery and Manufactures continues to have much to say to readers who are concerned with the causes of as well as the consequences of technological change. But it can, of course, equally well be read for the sheer intellectual excitement it provides in following a first-class mind as it attempts to comprehend, and to impose order upon, newly emerging forms of economic activity and organisation” (Rosenberg). Origins of Cyberspace 42; Van Sinderen, ‘The printed papers of Charles Babbage,’ Annals of the History of Computing, Vol. 2, 1980, pp. 169-85, no. 45; Hyman, Charles Babbage, Pioneer of the Computer, 1982; Schumpeter, History of Economic Analysis, Oxford University Press, New York 1954; Rosenberg, Babbage: Pioneer Economist (http://projects.exeter.ac.uk/babbage/rosenb.html).
Large 8vo (217 x 135mm), pp. xvi, 320, [2, advertisements], including added engraved title (some spotting, less than is usual for this book). Contemporary English calf with raised bands and black spine label (extremities with some light wear).
Item #5523
Price: $4,500.00
