Timeline

A century and a half of
structured thinking.

Every entry in the library, in the order it was set down, from 1844 to 2023. Read top to bottom and the century's preoccupations pass in view: cost and control before the war, quality and process after it, competition and positioning in the boardroom decades, then customers, teams and experiments as the work moved closer to the people doing it.

The patterns are on the same plate, marked in brass. They are dated the same way, by the year of the source the shape is anchored to, but they are a different kind of thing: a framework is an instrument, a pattern is a shape a business model takes.