Norman: "In pursuit of methods that might better enable the construction of his calculating or 'Difference' engine, Babbage made an exhaustive study of both British and Continental industry, then combined the results with his longtime interest in political economy to produce On the Economy of Machinery and Manufactures. Babbage's work marked the beginning of what would later be called operations research; i.e., the scientific analysis of any operations controlled by managers. Babbage was also the first British political economist to acknowledge England's transition from an agricultural to an industrial economy, and his pioneering treatise was 'at once a hymn to the machine, an analysis of the development of machine-based production in the factory, and a discussion of social relations in industry' (Hyman, p. 103)"