Mr. Carl Georg Lange Barth

A Norwegian-American mathematician and mechanical engineer who improved and popularized the industrial use of compound slide rules in scientific management. He was born in Christiania, Norway, and was a graduate from University at Christiania. He later attended the Royal Norwegian Navy technical school at Horten. In 1877, he started an apprenticeship in the navy yard at Karljohansvern in Horten. In 1899, efficiency expert Frederick W. Taylor hired him to work at Bethlehem Steel Company. He helped to develop speed-and-feed-calculating slide rules. In 1902, he and Taylor went to work for William Sellers at the machine tool firm of William Sellers & Company of Philadelphia. An account of their application of slide rules was published in the Transactions of the American Society of Mechanical Engineers in 1904. In 1905 he started on his independent career as consulting engineer and became an early consultant on scientific management; later teaching at Harvard University. He edited articles submitted to International Correspondence School of Scranton, Pennsylvania publication, the Home Study Magazine. In 1909, he undertook the installation of scientific management in the Watertown Arsenal at Watertown, Massachusetts.