The Economy of Machinery and Manufactures a three-volume book on, as the name suggests, the manufacture of goods, the machines that manufacture those goods and, of course, the organization of those who operate the machines themselves. It was an early influential work of operational research and is today best remembered, at best, as a seminal work on the organization of factories and production – the one in which the famous “Babbage principle” was first set forth – or, at worst, as a curio of the Industrial Revolution.

Author Charles Babbage is perhaps better known for his creation of the analytical engine, his association with Ada Lovelace and his modern title as the “father of the computer,” but he was also an astute economist theorist and, in his The Economy of Machinery and Manufactures, he convincingly displays his acumen for economics and the organization of industrial production.