Charles Day (engineer)

Charles Day (May 15, 1879 – May 10, 1931) was an American electrical, construction and consulting engineer, and co-founder of Day & Zimmermann. He is known as a specialist in public utility management and operation,''Electrical World T & D,'' Vol. 97, 1931, p. 924 and for his seminal contributions to flow charts and the routing diagram.''AA Files: Annals of the Architectural Association School of Architecture,'' (2005, p. 50)

Biography

Youth, education and early career

Day was born in 1879 in Germantown, Philadelphia, son of Charles A. Day and Frances Corson Day. He attended Germantown Academy, where he met his future business partner Kern Dodge, son of James Mapes Dodge. After graduation he entered the University of Pennsylvania, where he received his BS in 1899 in Electrical Engineering. Thereafter in 1901 he obtained his Master of Engineering in 1901.

After obtaining his master's degree, Day was superintendent of installation of power-plant equipment and transmission machinery at the 1899 Philadelphia Export Exposition,Engineering Magazine,
Charles Day
" Engineering Magazine. v.39 1910 Apr-Sep. p. 7; Section: The publisher's announcement, Authors and papers for September 1910. where James Mapes Dodge had served on the exhibition commission. At its close, 31 November 1899, Day entered the employ of Link Belt Engineering Co. in Nicetown–Tioga where James Mapes Dodge was president. He started out as assistant to superintendent and became engineer of works, working on modernizing the plant.

Dodge himself would become one of the promoters of scientific management, and Day would follow into those footsteps. One decade later a 1911 article in ''The American Magazine'' would present Day as one of a dozen frontmen of scientific management. Frederick W. Taylor. "The Gospel of Efficiency; Part III: Principles of Scientific Management," in: ''The American Magazine.'' v.72 1911 May-Oct. p. 110

Career as construction and consulting engineer

After Day's friend Kern Dodge obtained his BS in mechanical engineering at Drexel Institute in 1901, the two of them founded the company Dodge & Day, specializing in engineering, shop equipment and management. One of their first employees was Conrad N. Lauer. Later, the scope of the organization was enlarged to include a great deal of engineering and construction work in both the industrial and public-service fields. In 1907, another former classmate John Zimmerman joined the firm as partner, and they renamed the firm Dodge, Day & Zimmermann. After Kern Dodge withdrew as partner in 1911, the firm became Day & Zimmermann, incorporated in 1916, and still exists today.

One of the associates in the consulting firm of Charles Day was Walter Polakov from 1912 to 1915, who had joined Gantt's consulting firm in 1915, and started his own firm in 1915. In World War I Day served on the United States Shipping Board in its Emergency Fleet Corporation. He wrote a series of lectures for the Harvard Business School, and was a trustee of the University of Pennsylvania.Thomas Eakins, Phyllis D. Rosenzweig (1977), ''The Thomas Eakins collection of the Hirshhorn Museum and Sculpture Garden.'' 1977. p. 183

Day was an active member of the American Society of Mechanical Engineers; member of the Board of Managers and chairman of the mechanical engineering section of the Franklin Institute, associate member of the American Institute of Electrical Engineers, now IEEE; member of the former New York Electrical Society; member of the Engineers Club of Philadelphia, and Engineers' Club; and member of the Machinery Club, New York.

Death

Still chairman of the board of Day & Zimmermann, Inc., Charles Day died May 10, 1931 in the University Hospital, Philadelphia after an illness of ten days at the age of fifty-three.

Work

Educated at first in Electrical Engineering, Day's work developed into the fields of mechanical, construction, civil and management engineering. It is not without reason his biographer Taylor, H. Birchard (1953) named him a "Symbol of American Industrial Genius."

In the mentioned 1911 article in ''The American Magazine'' by Frederick Winslow Taylor, Day was presented as "Charles P. Day of Philadelphia, an efficiency engineer, who adopted Scientific Management to the construction of factories and manufacturing plants." For the design of manufacturing plants and civil works, Day co-founded his own engineering firm that still exists today. Day did more than just adopt ideas, and brought them into practice. He developed one or two innovative graphical techniques, and with that contributed to the graphic history of scientific management.

Day & Zimmermann

In 1901 Day and Kern Dodge laid the foundation for the engineering company Day & Zimmermann. According to American Society of Civil Engineers (1975) the two founders both had in common, that they "dreamed of a new and revolutionary business: Modernizing Engineering... oweverin those early days their assets were a modest shed building, high hopes and a good idea. They had no clients."American Society of Civil Engineers. Philadelphia Section (1976). ''History of civil engineering and construction in the Delaware Valley'' The story how it all started, has been told:

:"... Their ad in American Machinist drew one response — from the owner of a firm In New York who said he was curious to see a "Modernizing Engineer" and wanted the young men to "drop in sometime". Day and Dodge did drop in and the next morning they added their first client to their list of assets. In the early 1900s time studies, efficiency experts and program planning were virtually unknown. Management and administration had not kept up with dramatic engineering developments. Dodge and Day introduced a new concept which they called Betterment Reports — assessment and evaluation studies to help industries' management become more efficient, aggressive and progressive..."

One of the first notable engineering accomplishments of the Day & Zimmermann company was the design of the construction of the Gatun Lock System, one of the Panama Canal locks in 1907. The construction of the Gatun Lock began with the first concrete laid at Gatun, on August 24, 1909, by the Philadelphia-based company Day, Dodge & Zimmermann.

In 1914, the company was contacted by the Hershey chocolate company to produce the foil wrapping machines for Hershey's Kisses.

"The Machine Shop Problem," 1903

In the 1903 paper entitled "The Machine Shop Problem" in the ''Transactions of the American Society of Mechanical Engineers'', Day presented a method for the analysis and organization design of machine shops based on the Taylor System. The first subject of discussion was the subdivision of the departments of a machine shop. For this matter a general subdivision and a further subdivision can be made. The following topics of discussion were the means of attaining economical production in the machine shop, the Question of Power Application with Courses to fulfill the conditions, and the advantages derived from the use of individual motors on machine tools.
The last topic was the graphical distribution of costs, showing cost value of operations.Charles Day (1903)

Routing diagram

The 1909 article in the ''Engineering Magazine'' entitled ''The routing diagram as a basis for laying out industrial plants'' proposed a new type of graphic illustration of the material flow through industrial plants, named the routing diagram. The first presentation itself had the following intention:

:"The primary purpose of this article is to call attention to the advantages that can be derived from the use of the graphical routing diagram as a basis for the planning of industrial plants. This diagram, as its name implies, indicates the paths or routes followed by the materials of manufacture when passing from their crude to their finished state, and in its final development it absolutely defines the plant in all particulars of layout."Day (1909, 809)

The graphic method presented consisted of two types of routing diagram, a ''perspective routing diagram'' and a ''detail routing diagram,'' combined with an exterior view. The article itself gives as an example the design of a gasoline automobile factory. The given graphics deliver complementary views with:
* Perspective routing diagram, in outline, showing paths followed during manufacture of principal units entering into gasoline automobiles
* Exterior view of automobile plant to which the routing diagram relates
* Detail Routing Diagram, Machine-tool equipment and paths or parts in a wagon- and carriage-axle plant
These views were illustrated with the following three images:

Despite this clear presentation, neither Charles Day nor anybody else is generally credited for making a seminal contribution to the routing diagram or route diagram. For example, in one of the first seminal works in the field, the 1923 book ''Industrial Management'' by Richard H. Lansburgh, there is a separate chapter "Factory Building and Plant Lay out." This chapter discussed the matter with the similar three types of views, and some more, without any reference to the work of Charles Day. Instead of ''perspective routing diagram'', Lansburgh speaks of ''vertical layout'', and the ''detail routing diagram'' is named a ''flow chart.''

With the articles of Wrege (1978), Wrege (1999) and others, there is a re-evaluation of these contributions. For example, the ''AA Files'' (2005, p. 50) summarized that:

::... this new route diagram was introduced by efficiency engineer Charles Day (1879–1931) in 1911 as the basis for the layout and design of industrial plants. Assuming that interior function should entirely determine a factory's layout. Day claimed that after the flow diagram was complete the building 'merely needed to be drawn around it'. This diagrammatic method assured that 'the imagination will not be drawn upon because the assumptions are based on absolute facts and not theory' – a positivist, objective stance that came to dominate ideas about flow diagrams.

Day was not the first to introduce the concept of routing diagrams. For example, James Bray Griffith in his 1905 book ''Systematizing'' already contained a section on " Charting factory layout and routing" which contained two simplified routing diagrams for handling lumber, that he called ''arrangements.'' Another contemporary, Oscar E. Perrigo, published on the design of machine shops in his ''Modern machine shop'' (1906), looking at machine shop lay out and arrangements of machinery. In contrast to this work, Day did take this design problem to a next level by putting the dynamic interaction first.

Management of Navy yards

In 1911 Charles Day worked together with Henry Gantt and Harrington Emerson

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