Charles Day (engineer)

He is known as a specialist in public utility management and operation,[3] and for his seminal contributions to flow charts[4] and the routing diagram.

[citation needed] After obtaining his master's degree, Day was superintendent of installation of power-plant equipment and transmission machinery at the 1899 Philadelphia Export Exposition,[7] where James Mapes Dodge had served on the exhibition commission.

[8] At its close, 31 November 1899, Day entered the employ of Link Belt Engineering Co. in Nicetown–Tioga where James Mapes Dodge was president.

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.

[13] In World War I Day served on the United States Shipping Board in its Emergency Fleet Corporation.

"[9] For the design of manufacturing plants and civil works, Day co-founded his own engineering firm that still exists today.

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."

Wren (2009) summarized that "their efforts went for naught when, following the Interstate Commerce Commission hearings in late 1911, the Secretary of the Navy announced that he would never allow scientific management to be applied in the nation’s shipyards.

"[27] The breakthrough happened in the same period, as Wren (2009) further explained: The developments set in motion in those days did pave the way to the realization of Gantt charts.

[citation needed] In June 1903 Charles Day had presented a paper entitled The Machine Shop Problem as described above, in which he proposed a number of charts to be used in management.

Day, by then still a junior ASME member, had presented his paper to an audience with among others Frederick Winslow Taylor, Henry Gantt and John Calder commenting on his ideas.

[29] In remembrance of his name, the Newcomen Society in North America held an annual Charles Day lecture for decades.