Information Systems for Handling Manufacturing and Marketing Data in American Firms, 1880-1920

As Alfred D. Chandler, Jr. [4, 5] and others have shown, the scale of manufacturing was transformed in the late 19th and early 20th centuries. The enormous increases in manufacturing throughput also motivated many firms to internalize the marketing function in order to effect comparable increases in sales. These developments would not have been profitable, however, without corresponding changes in managerial methods. Beginning in the late 19th century, the ad hoc management of the past gave way to more systematic methods of management heavily dependent on the collection and analysis of information.