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98-924: Admin assistants perform clerical duties in nearly every industry. Some administrative assistants, like those in the legal industry, may be more specialized than others. Most administrative assistant duties revolve around managing and distributing information within an office . This generally includes answering phones, taking memos and maintaining files. Administrative assistants may also be in charge of sending and receiving correspondence, as well as greeting clients and customers . Bookkeeping Admin assistants in some offices may be charged with monitoring and recording expenditures. Duties may range from creating spreadsheets to reporting expenses to an office manager . As such, some administrative assistants may be required to be knowledgeable in office bookkeeping software, such as Microsoft Excel . Planning and scheduling Planning events like board meetings and luncheons may also be

196-468: A small business or a room in someone's home (see small office/home office ), entire floors of buildings, and massive buildings dedicated entirely to one company. In modern terms, an office is usually the location where white-collar workers carry out their functions. In classical antiquity , offices were often part of a palace complex or a large temple. In the High Middle Ages (1000–1300),

294-483: A 3,000,000-square-foot (280,000 m ) building in Chicago, at the time the largest building in the world. The time and motion study , pioneered in manufacturing by F. W. Taylor and later applied to the office environment by Frank and Lillian Gilbreth , led to the idea that managers needed to play an active role in directing the work of subordinates to increase the efficiency of the workplace. F.W. Taylor advocated

392-400: A better way could be found to remove the seed. Eli Whitney responded to the challenge by inventing the inexpensive cotton gin . A man using a cotton gin could remove seed from as much upland cotton in one day as would previously have taken two months to process, working at the rate of one pound of cotton per day. These advances were capitalised on by entrepreneurs , of whom the best known

490-520: A cottage industry under the putting-out system . Occasionally, the work was done in the workshop of a master weaver. Under the putting-out system, home-based workers produced under contract to merchant sellers, who often supplied the raw materials. In the off-season, the women, typically farmers' wives, did the spinning and the men did the weaving. Using the spinning wheel , it took anywhere from four to eight spinners to supply one handloom weaver. The flying shuttle , patented in 1733 by John Kay —with

588-670: A groundswell of enterprise and productivity transformed the economy in the 17th century, laying the foundations for the world's first industrial economy. Britain was already a nation of makers by the year 1700" and "the history of Britain needs to be rewritten". Eric Hobsbawm held that the Industrial Revolution began in Britain in the 1780s and was not fully felt until the 1830s or 1840s, while T. S. Ashton held that it occurred roughly between 1760 and 1830. Rapid adoption of mechanized textiles spinning occurred in Britain in

686-515: A lot of concentration, or include many small meetings. Shared office : a compact, semi-private workspace designed for two or three individuals, facilitating both focused work and small group collaboration. Team room : an enclosed workspace for four to ten people; suitable for teamwork that may be confidential and demands frequent internal communication. Study booth : an enclosed workspace for one person; suitable for short-term activities that demand concentration or confidentiality. Work lounge :

784-1734: A lounge-like workspace for two to six people; suitable for short-term activities that demand collaboration and/or allow impromptu interaction. Touch down : an open workspace for one person; suitable for short-term activities that require little concentration and low interaction. Meeting spaces in an office typically use interactive processes, be they quick conversations or intensive brainstorming. There are six generic types of meeting spaces, each supporting different activities. Small meeting room : an enclosed meeting space for two to four people; suitable for both formal and informal interaction. Medium meeting room : an enclosed meeting space for four to ten people; suitable for both formal and informal interaction. Large meeting room : an enclosed meeting space for ten or more people; suitable for formal interaction. Small meeting space : an open or semi-open meeting space for two to four persons; suitable for short, informal interaction. Medium meeting space : an open or semi-open meeting space for four to ten persons; suitable for short, informal interaction. Large meeting space : an open or semi-open meeting space for ten or more people people; suitable for short, informal interaction. Brainstorm room : an enclosed meeting space for five to twelve people; suitable for brainstorming sessions and workshops. Meeting point : an open meeting point for two to four people; suitable for ad hoc, informal meetings. Support spaces in an office are typically used for secondary activities such as filing documents or taking breaks. There are twelve generic types of support spaces, each supporting different activities. Filing space : an open or enclosed support space for

882-425: A major turning point in history, comparable only to humanity's adoption of agriculture with respect to material advancement. The Industrial Revolution influenced in some way almost every aspect of daily life. In particular, average income and population began to exhibit unprecedented sustained growth. Some economists have said the most important effect of the Industrial Revolution was that the standard of living for

980-421: A mechanised industry. Other inventors increased the efficiency of the individual steps of spinning (carding, twisting and spinning, and rolling) so that the supply of yarn increased greatly. Steam power was then applied to drive textile machinery. Manchester acquired the nickname Cottonopolis during the early 19th century owing to its sprawl of textile factories. Although mechanisation dramatically decreased

1078-726: A more even thickness. The technology was developed with the help of John Wyatt of Birmingham . Paul and Wyatt opened a mill in Birmingham which used their rolling machine powered by a donkey. In 1743, a factory opened in Northampton with 50 spindles on each of five of Paul and Wyatt's machines. This operated until about 1764. A similar mill was built by Daniel Bourn in Leominster , but this burnt down. Both Lewis Paul and Daniel Bourn patented carding machines in 1748. Based on two sets of rollers that travelled at different speeds, it

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1176-609: A new group of innovations in what has been called the Second Industrial Revolution . These included new steel-making processes , mass production , assembly lines , electrical grid systems, the large-scale manufacture of machine tools, and the use of increasingly advanced machinery in steam-powered factories. The earliest recorded use of the term "Industrial Revolution" was in July 1799 by French envoy Louis-Guillaume Otto , announcing that France had entered

1274-406: A number of subsequent improvements including an important one in 1747—doubled the output of a weaver, worsening the imbalance between spinning and weaving. It became widely used around Lancashire after 1760 when John's son, Robert , invented the dropbox, which facilitated changing thread colors. Lewis Paul patented the roller spinning frame and the flyer-and- bobbin system for drawing wool to

1372-400: A result of the country's unique business culture. Japanese offices tend to follow open plan layouts in an 'island-style' arrangement, which promotes teamwork and top-down management. They also use uchi-awase (informal meetings) and ringi-sho (consensus systems) to encourage input on policies from as many groups throughout the office as possible. The main purpose of an office environment

1470-433: A result, more office space was assigned to house their activities. The time-and-motion study , pioneered in manufacturing by F. W. Taylor (1856–1915), led to the "Modern Efficiency Desk" of 1915. Its flat top, with drawers below, was designed to allow managers an easy view of their workers. By the middle of the 20th century, it became apparent that an efficient office required additional control over privacy , and gradually

1568-410: A reverberatory furnace, coal or coke could be used as fuel. The puddling process continued to be used until the late 19th century when iron was being displaced by mild steel. Because puddling required human skill in sensing the iron globs, it was never successfully mechanised. Rolling was an important part of the puddling process because the grooved rollers expelled most of the molten slag and consolidated

1666-618: A semi-enclosed workspace for two to eight people; suitable for teamwork which demands frequent internal communication and a medium level of concentration. Cubicle : a semi-enclosed workspace for one person; suitable for activities that demand medium concentration and medium interaction. Office Pod : ideal for fostering privacy in today's bustling open-plan offices. It provides a cost-effective and efficient way to ensure privacy and continuity during conversations, calls, and video conferences. Private office : an enclosed workspace for one person; suitable for activities that are confidential, demand

1764-625: A semi-open or enclosed support space where employees can take a break from their work. Locker area : an open or semi-open support space where employees can store their personal belongings. Smoking room : an enclosed support space where employees can smoke a cigarette. Library : a semi-open or enclosed support space for reading books, journals and magazines. Games room : an enclosed support space where employees can play games, such as pool or darts. Waiting area : an open or semi-open support space where visitors can be received and wait for their appointment. Circulation space : support space which

1862-474: A simple solution and provide all of the former types of space. Workspaces in an office are typically used for conventional office activities such as reading, writing, and computer work. There are nine generic types of workspaces, each supporting different activities. Open office : an open workspace for more than ten people; suitable for activities that demand frequent communication or routine activities that need relatively little concentration. Team space :

1960-438: A simple, wooden framed machine that only cost about £6 for a 40-spindle model in 1792 and was used mainly by home spinners. The jenny produced a lightly twisted yarn only suitable for weft, not warp. The spinning frame or water frame was developed by Richard Arkwright who, along with two partners, patented it in 1769. The design was partly based on a spinning machine built by Kay, who was hired by Arkwright. For each spindle

2058-625: A variety of cotton cloth, some of exceptionally fine quality. Cotton was a difficult raw material for Europe to obtain before it was grown on colonial plantations in the Americas. The early Spanish explorers found Native Americans growing unknown species of excellent quality cotton: sea island cotton ( Gossypium barbadense ) and upland green seeded cotton Gossypium hirsutum . Sea island cotton grew in tropical areas and on barrier islands of Georgia and South Carolina but did poorly inland. Sea island cotton began being exported from Barbados in

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2156-493: A weight. The weights kept the twist from backing up before the rollers. The bottom rollers were wood and metal, with fluting along the length. The water frame was able to produce a hard, medium-count thread suitable for warp, finally allowing 100% cotton cloth to be made in Britain. Arkwright and his partners used water power at a factory in Cromford , Derbyshire in 1771, giving the invention its name. Samuel Crompton invented

2254-430: Is Arkwright. He is credited with a list of inventions, but these were actually developed by such people as Kay and Thomas Highs ; Arkwright nurtured the inventors, patented the ideas, financed the initiatives, and protected the machines. He created the cotton mill which brought the production processes together in a factory, and he developed the use of power—first horsepower and then water power—which made cotton manufacture

2352-411: Is a space where the employees of an organization perform administrative work in order to support and realize the various goals of the organization. The word "office" may also denote a position within an organization with specific duties attached to it (see officer or official ); the latter is an earlier usage, as "office" originally referred to the location of one's duty. In its adjective form,

2450-544: Is required for circulation on office floors, linking all major functions. Lactation rooms are also support spaces that are legally mandatory for companies in the United States, as of the 2010 Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act. Industrial Revolution The Industrial Revolution , sometimes divided into the First Industrial Revolution and Second Industrial Revolution ,

2548-513: Is to support its occupants in performing their jobs—preferably at minimum cost and with maximum satisfaction. Different people performing different tasks will require different office spaces, or spaces that can handle a variety of uses. To aid decision-making in workplace and office design, one can distinguish three different types of office spaces: workspaces, meeting spaces, and support spaces. For new or developing businesses, remote satellite offices and project rooms, or serviced offices , can provide

2646-593: The British Agricultural Revolution , to provide excess manpower and food; a pool of managerial and entrepreneurial skills; available ports, rivers, canals, and roads to cheaply move raw materials and outputs; natural resources such as coal, iron, and waterfalls; political stability and a legal system that supported business; and financial capital available to invest. Once industrialisation began in Great Britain, new factors can be added:

2744-576: The East India Company . The development of trade and the rise of business were among the major causes of the Industrial Revolution. Developments in law also facilitated the revolution, such as courts ruling in favour of property rights . An entrepreneurial spirit and consumer revolution helped drive industrialisation in Britain, which after 1800, was emulated in Belgium, the United States, and France. The Industrial Revolution marked

2842-502: The cubicle system evolved. The word "office" stems from the Latin " officium " and its equivalents in various Romance languages . An officium was not necessarily a place, but often referred instead to human staff members of an organization, or even the abstract notion of a formal position like a magistrate. The elaborate Roman bureaucracy would not be equaled for centuries in the West after

2940-551: The minutes of meetings . Administrative assistants in some fields may be required to have extensive professional knowledge. Accordingly, duties for these assistants may be more specialized. For example, legal administrative assistants may need to have a thorough understanding of legal terminology and procedures, while medical assistants may need to be well-versed in dealing with insurance companies and reading medical reports. In this role they are also referred to as administrative support specialists. Average employment growth of 12%

3038-488: The spinning mule in 1779, so called because it is a hybrid of Arkwright's water frame and James Hargreaves 's spinning jenny in the same way that a mule is the product of crossbreeding a female horse with a male donkey . Crompton's mule was able to produce finer thread than hand spinning and at a lower cost. Mule-spun thread was of suitable strength to be used as a warp and finally allowed Britain to produce highly competitive yarn in large quantities. Realising that

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3136-582: The technological and architectural innovations were of British origin. By the mid-18th century, Britain was the world's leading commercial nation, controlling a global trading empire with colonies in North America and the Caribbean. Britain had major military and political hegemony on the Indian subcontinent ; particularly with the proto-industrialised Mughal Bengal , through the activities of

3234-441: The 1650s. Upland green seeded cotton grew well on inland areas of the southern U.S. but was not economical because of the difficulty of removing seed, a problem solved by the cotton gin . A strain of cotton seed brought from Mexico to Natchez, Mississippi , in 1806 became the parent genetic material for over 90% of world cotton production today; it produced bolls that were three to four times faster to pick. The Age of Discovery

3332-453: The 1780s, and high rates of growth in steam power and iron production occurred after 1800. Mechanised textile production spread from Great Britain to continental Europe and the United States in the early 19th century, with important centres of textiles, iron and coal emerging in Belgium and the United States and later textiles in France. An economic recession occurred from the late 1830s to

3430-610: The 18th century to suit the needs of large and growing organizations such as the Royal Navy and the East India Company . The Old Admiralty ( Ripley Building ) was built in 1726 and was the first purpose-built office building in Great Britain. As well as offices, the building housed a board room and apartments for the Lords of the Admiralty. In the 1770s, many scattered offices for the Royal Navy were gathered into Somerset House ,

3528-496: The Indian industry. Bar iron was the commodity form of iron used as the raw material for making hardware goods such as nails, wire, hinges, horseshoes, wagon tires, chains, etc., as well as structural shapes. A small amount of bar iron was converted into steel. Cast iron was used for pots, stoves, and other items where its brittleness was tolerable. Most cast iron was refined and converted to bar iron, with substantial losses. Bar iron

3626-480: The Industrial Revolution, thus causing the Great Divergence . Some historians, such as John Clapham and Nicholas Crafts , have argued that the economic and social changes occurred gradually and that the term revolution is a misnomer. This is still a subject of debate among some historians. Six factors facilitated industrialisation: high levels of agricultural productivity, such as that reflected in

3724-577: The Scottish inventor James Beaumont Neilson in 1828, was the most important development of the 19th century for saving energy in making pig iron. By using preheated combustion air, the amount of fuel to make a unit of pig iron was reduced at first by between one-third using coke or two-thirds using coal; the efficiency gains continued as the technology improved. Hot blast also raised the operating temperature of furnaces, increasing their capacity. Using less coal or coke meant introducing fewer impurities into

3822-556: The Western European models in the late 19th century. The commencement of the Industrial Revolution is closely linked to a small number of innovations, beginning in the second half of the 18th century. By the 1830s, the following gains had been made in important technologies: In 1750, Britain imported 2.5 million pounds of raw cotton, most of which was spun and woven by the cottage industry in Lancashire . The work

3920-500: The central office each day. As the Industrial Revolution intensified in the 18th and 19th centuries, the industries of banking , rail , insurance , retail , petroleum , and telegraphy dramatically grew in size and complexity. Increasingly large number of clerks were needed to handle order processing, accounting, and document filing, and these clerks needed to be housed in increasingly specialized spaces. Most of

4018-471: The coal do not migrate into the metal. This technology was applied to lead from 1678 and to copper from 1687. It was also applied to iron foundry work in the 1690s, but in this case the reverberatory furnace was known as an air furnace. (The foundry cupola is a different, and later, innovation.) Coke pig iron was hardly used to produce wrought iron until 1755–56, when Darby's son Abraham Darby II built furnaces at Horsehay and Ketley where low sulfur coal

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4116-409: The coke pig iron he made was not suitable for making wrought iron and was used mostly for the production of cast iron goods, such as pots and kettles. He had the advantage over his rivals in that his pots, cast by his patented process, were thinner and cheaper than theirs. In 1750, coke had generally replaced charcoal in the smelting of copper and lead and was in widespread use in glass production. In

4214-467: The column of materials (iron ore, fuel, slag) flowing down the blast furnace more porous and did not crush in the much taller furnaces of the late 19th century. As cast iron became cheaper and widely available, it began being a structural material for bridges and buildings. A famous early example is the Iron Bridge built in 1778 with cast iron produced by Abraham Darby III. However, most cast iron

4312-495: The cost of cotton cloth, by the mid-19th century machine-woven cloth still could not equal the quality of hand-woven Indian cloth, in part because of the fineness of thread made possible by the type of cotton used in India, which allowed high thread counts. However, the high productivity of British textile manufacturing allowed coarser grades of British cloth to undersell hand-spun and woven fabric in low-wage India, eventually destroying

4410-542: The cotton textile industry in Britain was 2.6% in 1760, 17% in 1801, and 22.4% in 1831. Value added by the British woollen industry was 14.1% in 1801. Cotton factories in Britain numbered approximately 900 in 1797. In 1760, approximately one-third of cotton cloth manufactured in Britain was exported, rising to two-thirds by 1800. In 1781, cotton spun amounted to 5.1 million pounds, which increased to 56 million pounds by 1800. In 1800, less than 0.1% of world cotton cloth

4508-427: The country. Steam engines made the use of higher-pressure and volume blast practical; however, the leather used in bellows was expensive to replace. In 1757, ironmaster John Wilkinson patented a hydraulic powered blowing engine for blast furnaces. The blowing cylinder for blast furnaces was introduced in 1760 and the first blowing cylinder made of cast iron is believed to be the one used at Carrington in 1768 that

4606-418: The desks of the era were top-heavy and had a cubicle-like appearance, with paper storage bins extending above the desk-work area, offering workers some degree of privacy. The relatively high price of land in the central core of cities led to the first multi-story buildings, which were limited to about 10 stories until the use of iron and steel allowed for higher structures. The first purpose-built office block

4704-456: The eagerness of British entrepreneurs to export industrial expertise and the willingness to import the process. Britain met the criteria and industrialized starting in the 18th century, and then it exported the process to western Europe (especially Belgium, France, and the German states) in the early 19th century. The United States copied the British model in the early 19th century, and Japan copied

4802-607: The early 1840s when the adoption of the Industrial Revolution's early innovations, such as mechanised spinning and weaving, slowed as their markets matured; and despite the increasing adoption of locomotives, steamboats and steamships, and hot blast iron smelting . New technologies such as the electrical telegraph , widely introduced in the 1840s and 1850s in the United Kingdom and the United States, were not powerful enough to drive high rates of economic growth. Rapid economic growth began to reoccur after 1870, springing from

4900-401: The existence of such "offices". These rooms are sometimes called "libraries" by some archaeologists because of scrolls' association with literature. They were, however, closer to modern offices because the scrolls were meant for record-keeping and other management functions, not for poetry or works of fiction. The High Middle Ages (1000–1300) saw the rise of the medieval chancery , which was

4998-465: The expiration of the Arkwright patent would greatly increase the supply of spun cotton and lead to a shortage of weavers, Edmund Cartwright developed a vertical power loom which he patented in 1785. In 1776, he patented a two-man operated loom. Cartwright's loom design had several flaws, the most serious being thread breakage. Samuel Horrocks patented a fairly successful loom in 1813. Horock's loom

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5096-479: The fall of Rome , with areas partially reverting to illiteracy. Further east, the Byzantine Empire and varying Islamic caliphates preserved a more sophisticated administrative culture. Offices in classical antiquity were often part of a palace complex or a large temple. There was often a room where scrolls were kept and scribes did their work. Ancient texts mentioning the work of scribes allude to

5194-542: The first block purpose-built for office work. The East India House was built in 1729 on Leadenhall Street as the headquarters from which the East India Company administered its Indian colonial possessions . The Company developed a very complex bureaucracy for the task, necessitating thousands of office employees to process the required paperwork. The Company recognized the benefits of centralized administration and required that all workers sign in and out at

5292-528: The first highly mechanised factory was John Lombe 's water-powered silk mill at Derby , operational by 1721. Lombe learned silk thread manufacturing by taking a job in Italy and acting as an industrial spy; however, because the Italian silk industry guarded its secrets closely, the state of the industry at that time is unknown. Although Lombe's factory was technically successful, the supply of raw silk from Italy

5390-400: The first successful cylinder for a Boulton and Watt steam engine in 1776, he was given an exclusive contract for providing cylinders. After Watt developed a rotary steam engine in 1782, they were widely applied to blowing, hammering, rolling and slitting. The solutions to the sulfur problem were the addition of sufficient limestone to the furnace to force sulfur into the slag as well as

5488-534: The general population in the Western world began to increase consistently for the first time in history, although others have said that it did not begin to improve meaningfully until the late 19th and 20th centuries. GDP per capita was broadly stable before the Industrial Revolution and the emergence of the modern capitalist economy, while the Industrial Revolution began an era of per-capita economic growth in capitalist economies. Economic historians agree that

5586-451: The increasing use of water power and steam power ; the development of machine tools ; and the rise of the mechanised factory system . Output greatly increased, and the result was an unprecedented rise in population and the rate of population growth . The textile industry was the first to use modern production methods, and textiles became the dominant industry in terms of employment, value of output, and capital invested. Many of

5684-564: The invention of the printing press and its wider distribution, there was often no clear cultural distinction between a private office and a private library ; books were both read and written at the same desk or table , as were personal and professional accounts and letters. During the 13th century, the English word "office" first began to appear when referring to a position involving specific professional duties (for example, "the office of the....") Geoffrey Chaucer appears to have first used

5782-517: The iron industries during the Industrial Revolution was the replacement of wood and other bio-fuels with coal ; for a given amount of heat, mining coal required much less labour than cutting wood and converting it to charcoal , and coal was much more abundant than wood, supplies of which were becoming scarce before the enormous increase in iron production that took place in the late 18th century. In 1709, Abraham Darby made progress using coke to fuel his blast furnaces at Coalbrookdale . However,

5880-496: The late 19th century, and his expression did not enter everyday language until then. Credit for popularising the term may be given to Arnold Toynbee , whose 1881 lectures gave a detailed account of the term. Economic historians and authors such as Mendels, Pomeranz , and Kridte argue that proto-industrialisation in parts of Europe, the Muslim world , Mughal India , and China created the social and economic conditions that led to

5978-467: The mass of hot wrought iron. Rolling was 15 times faster at this than a trip hammer . A different use of rolling, which was done at lower temperatures than that for expelling slag, was in the production of iron sheets, and later structural shapes such as beams, angles, and rails. The puddling process was improved in 1818 by Baldwyn Rogers, who replaced some of the sand lining on the reverberatory furnace bottom with iron oxide . In 1838 John Hall patented

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6076-453: The medieval chancery acted as a sort of office, serving as the space where records and laws were stored and copied. With the growth of large, complex organizations in the 18th century, the first purpose-built office spaces were constructed. As the Industrial Revolution intensified in the 18th and 19th centuries, the industries of banking , rail , insurance , retail , petroleum , and telegraphy grew dramatically, requiring many clerks. As

6174-655: The midpoint of the 20th century, it became apparent that an efficient office required more privacy in order to combat tedium, increase productivity, and encourage creativity. In 1964, the Herman Miller (office equipment) company contracted Robert Propst , a prolific industrial designer. Propst came up with the concept of the Action Office , which later evolved into the cubicle office furniture system. Offices in Japan have developed unique characteristics partly as

6272-544: The number of cotton goods consumed in Western Europe was minor until the early 19th century. By 1600, Flemish refugees began weaving cotton cloth in English towns where cottage spinning and weaving of wool and linen was well established. They were left alone by the guilds who did not consider cotton a threat. Earlier European attempts at cotton spinning and weaving were in 12th-century Italy and 15th-century southern Germany, but these industries eventually ended when

6370-418: The onset of the Industrial Revolution is the most important event in human history since the domestication of animals and plants. The precise start and end of the Industrial Revolution is still debated among historians, as is the pace of economic and social changes . According to Cambridge historian Leigh Shaw-Taylor, Britain was already industrialising in the 17th century, and "Our database shows that

6468-665: The place where most government letters were written and laws were copied within a kingdom. The rooms of the chancery often had walls full of pigeonholes, constructed to hold rolled-up pieces of parchment for safekeeping or ready reference. This kind of structure was a precursor to the modern bookshelf. The introduction of the printing press during the Renaissance did not impact the setup and function of these government offices significantly. Medieval paintings and tapestries often show people in their private offices handling record-keeping books or writing on scrolls of parchment . Before

6566-501: The race to industrialise. In his 1976 book Keywords: A Vocabulary of Culture and Society , Raymond Williams states in the entry for "Industry": "The idea of a new social order based on major industrial change was clear in Southey and Owen , between 1811 and 1818, and was implicit as early as Blake in the early 1790s and Wordsworth at the turn of the [19th] century." The term Industrial Revolution applied to technological change

6664-467: The responsibility of admin assistants. This may require researching vendor prices or inquiring about participants' availability. Other duties may include scheduling appointments and preparing presentation materials. Documentation Admin assistants may also help office members with documentation. Aside from storing, organizing and managing files, assistants may need to type, edit and proofread documents. Some assistants may need to take dictation or record

6762-418: The slag from almost 50% to around 8%. Puddling became widely used after 1800. Up to that time, British iron manufacturers had used considerable amounts of iron imported from Sweden and Russia to supplement domestic supplies. Because of the increased British production, imports began to decline in 1785, and by the 1790s Britain eliminated imports and became a net exporter of bar iron. Hot blast , patented by

6860-457: The smelting and refining of iron, coal and coke produced inferior iron to that made with charcoal because of the coal's sulfur content. Low sulfur coals were known, but they still contained harmful amounts. Conversion of coal to coke only slightly reduces the sulfur content. A minority of coals are coking. Another factor limiting the iron industry before the Industrial Revolution was the scarcity of water power to power blast bellows. This limitation

6958-523: The storage of frequently used files and documents. Storage space : an open or enclosed support space for the storage of commonly used office supplies. Print and copy area : an open or enclosed support space with facilities for printing, scanning and copying. Mail area : an open or semi-open support space where employees can pick up or deliver their mail. Pantry area : an open or enclosed support space where employees can get refreshments and where supplies for visitor hospitality are kept. Break area :

7056-528: The supply of cotton was cut off. The Moors in Spain grew, spun, and wove cotton beginning around the 10th century. British cloth could not compete with Indian cloth because India's labour cost was approximately one-fifth to one-sixth that of Britain's. In 1700 and 1721, the British government passed Calico Acts to protect the domestic woollen and linen industries from the increasing amounts of cotton fabric imported from India. The demand for heavier fabric

7154-412: The term "office" may refer to business -related tasks. In law , a company or organization has offices in any place where it has an official presence, even if that presence consists of a storage silo , for example, instead of a more traditional establishment with a desk and chair . An office is also an architectural and design phenomenon, including small offices, such as a bench in the corner of

7252-600: The use of large, open floor plans and desks that faced supervisors. As a result, in 1915, the Equitable Life Insurance Company in New York City introduced the "Modern Efficiency Desk" with a flat top and drawers below, designed to allow managers an easy view of the workers. This led to a demand for large square footage per floor in buildings, and a return to the open spaces that were seen in pre–industrial revolution buildings. However, by

7350-415: The use of low sulfur coal. The use of lime or limestone required higher furnace temperatures to form a free-flowing slag. The increased furnace temperature made possible by improved blowing also increased the capacity of blast furnaces and allowed for increased furnace height. In addition to lower cost and greater availability, coke had other important advantages over charcoal in that it was harder and made

7448-406: The use of roasted tap cinder ( iron silicate ) for the furnace bottom, greatly reducing the loss of iron through increased slag caused by a sand lined bottom. The tap cinder also tied up some phosphorus, but this was not understood at the time. Hall's process also used iron scale or rust which reacted with carbon in the molten iron. Hall's process, called wet puddling , reduced losses of iron with

7546-410: The water frame used a series of four pairs of rollers, each operating at a successively higher rotating speed, to draw out the fibre which was then twisted by the spindle. The roller spacing was slightly longer than the fibre length. Too close a spacing caused the fibres to break while too distant a spacing caused uneven thread. The top rollers were leather-covered and loading on the rollers was applied by

7644-709: The word in 1395 to mean a place where business is transacted in The Canterbury Tales . As mercantilism became the dominant economic theory of the Renaissance , merchants tended to conduct their business in buildings that also sometimes housed people doing retail sales, warehousing, and clerical work. During the 15th century, the population density in many cities reached a point where merchants began to use stand-alone buildings to conduct their business. A distinction began to develop between religious, administrative/military, and commercial uses for buildings. The first purpose-built office spaces were constructed in

7742-505: Was 7,800 tons and coke cast iron was 250,000 tons. In 1750, the UK imported 31,200 tons of bar iron and either refined from cast iron or directly produced 18,800 tons of bar iron using charcoal and 100 tons using coke. In 1796, the UK was making 125,000 tons of bar iron with coke and 6,400 tons with charcoal; imports were 38,000 tons and exports were 24,600 tons. In 1806 the UK did not import bar iron but exported 31,500 tons. A major change in

7840-407: Was a means of decarburizing molten pig iron by slow oxidation in a reverberatory furnace by manually stirring it with a long rod. The decarburized iron, having a higher melting point than cast iron, was raked into globs by the puddler. When the glob was large enough, the puddler would remove it. Puddling was backbreaking and extremely hot work. Few puddlers lived to be 40. Because puddling was done in

7938-660: Was a period of global transition of the human economy towards more widespread, efficient and stable manufacturing processes that succeeded the Agricultural Revolution . Beginning in Great Britain , the Industrial Revolution spread to continental Europe and the United States , from around 1760 to about 1820–1840. This transition included going from hand production methods to machines ; new chemical manufacturing and iron production processes;

8036-606: Was available (and not far from Coalbrookdale). These furnaces were equipped with water-powered bellows, the water being pumped by Newcomen steam engines . The Newcomen engines were not attached directly to the blowing cylinders because the engines alone could not produce a steady air blast. Abraham Darby III installed similar steam-pumped, water-powered blowing cylinders at the Dale Company when he took control in 1768. The Dale Company used several Newcomen engines to drain its mines and made parts for engines which it sold throughout

8134-663: Was becoming more common by the late 1830s, as in Jérôme-Adolphe Blanqui 's description in 1837 of la révolution industrielle . Friedrich Engels in The Condition of the Working Class in England in 1844 spoke of "an industrial revolution, a revolution which at the same time changed the whole of civil society". Although Engels wrote his book in the 1840s, it was not translated into English until

8232-414: Was converted to wrought iron. Conversion of cast iron had long been done in a finery forge . An improved refining process known as potting and stamping was developed, but this was superseded by Henry Cort 's puddling process. Cort developed two significant iron manufacturing processes: rolling in 1783 and puddling in 1784. Puddling produced a structural grade iron at a relatively low cost. Puddling

8330-566: Was cut off to eliminate competition. In order to promote manufacturing, the Crown paid for models of Lombe's machinery which were exhibited in the Tower of London . Parts of India, China, Central America, South America, and the Middle East have a long history of hand manufacturing cotton textiles, which became a major industry sometime after 1000 AD. In tropical and subtropical regions where it

8428-403: Was designed by John Smeaton . Cast iron cylinders for use with a piston were difficult to manufacture; the cylinders had to be free of holes and had to be machined smooth and straight to remove any warping. James Watt had great difficulty trying to have a cylinder made for his first steam engine. In 1774 Wilkinson invented a precision boring machine for boring cylinders. After Wilkinson bored

8526-559: Was done by hand in workers' homes or occasionally in master weavers' shops. Wages in Lancashire were about six times those in India in 1770 when overall productivity in Britain was about three times higher than in India. In 1787, raw cotton consumption was 22 million pounds, most of which was cleaned, carded, and spun on machines. The British textile industry used 52 million pounds of cotton in 1800, which increased to 588 million pounds in 1850. The share of value added by

8624-508: Was expected for secretaries and administrative assistants, from 2012 to 2022, according to the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS). General secretaries and administrative assistants, not serving as legal, medical or executive secretaries, earned an annual median wage in 2018 of $ 52,840, according to the BLS. Employers look for workers with knowledge, combination of skills, personal traits, and attitudes. They include: Office An office

8722-544: Was followed by a period of colonialism beginning around the 16th century. Following the discovery of a trade route to India around southern Africa by the Portuguese, the British founded the East India Company , along with smaller companies of different nationalities which established trading posts and employed agents to engage in trade throughout the Indian Ocean region. One of the largest segments of this trade

8820-569: Was grown, most was grown by small farmers alongside their food crops and was spun and woven in households, largely for domestic consumption. In the 15th century, China began to require households to pay part of their taxes in cotton cloth. By the 17th century, almost all Chinese wore cotton clothing. Almost everywhere cotton cloth could be used as a medium of exchange . In India, a significant amount of cotton textiles were manufactured for distant markets, often produced by professional weavers. Some merchants also owned small weaving workshops. India produced

8918-479: Was improved by Richard Roberts in 1822, and these were produced in large numbers by Roberts, Hill & Co. Roberts was additionally a maker of high-quality machine tools and a pioneer in the use of jigs and gauges for precision workshop measurement. The demand for cotton presented an opportunity to planters in the Southern United States, who thought upland cotton would be a profitable crop if

9016-591: Was in cotton textiles, which were purchased in India and sold in Southeast Asia , including the Indonesian archipelago where spices were purchased for sale to Southeast Asia and Europe. By the mid-1760s, cloth was over three-quarters of the East India Company's exports. Indian textiles were in demand in the North Atlantic region of Europe where previously only wool and linen were available; however,

9114-400: Was later used in the first cotton spinning mill . In 1764, in the village of Stanhill, Lancashire, James Hargreaves invented the spinning jenny , which he patented in 1770. It was the first practical spinning frame with multiple spindles. The jenny worked in a similar manner to the spinning wheel, by first clamping down on the fibres, then by drawing them out, followed by twisting. It was

9212-437: Was made by the bloomery process, which was the predominant iron smelting process until the late 18th century. In the UK in 1720, there were 20,500 tons of cast iron produced with charcoal and 400 tons with coke. In 1750 charcoal iron production was 24,500 and coke iron was 2,500 tons. In 1788, the production of charcoal cast iron was 14,000 tons while coke iron production was 54,000 tons. In 1806, charcoal cast iron production

9310-419: Was met by a domestic industry based around Lancashire that produced fustian , a cloth with flax warp and cotton weft . Flax was used for the warp because wheel-spun cotton did not have sufficient strength, but the resulting blend was not as soft as 100% cotton and was more difficult to sew. On the eve of the Industrial Revolution, spinning and weaving were done in households, for domestic consumption, and as

9408-413: Was overcome by the steam engine. Use of coal in iron smelting started somewhat before the Industrial Revolution, based on innovations by Clement Clerke and others from 1678, using coal reverberatory furnaces known as cupolas. These were operated by the flames playing on the ore and charcoal or coke mixture, reducing the oxide to metal. This has the advantage that impurities (such as sulphur ash) in

9506-425: Was produced on machinery invented in Britain. In 1788, there were 50,000 spindles in Britain, rising to 7 million over the next 30 years. The earliest European attempts at mechanised spinning were with wool; however, wool spinning proved more difficult to mechanise than cotton. Productivity improvement in wool spinning during the Industrial Revolution was significant but far less than that of cotton. Arguably

9604-539: Was the Brunswick Building, built in Liverpool in 1841. The invention of the safety elevator in 1852 by Elisha Otis enabled the rapid upward escalation of buildings. By the end of the 19th century, larger office buildings frequently contained large glass atriums to allow light into the complex and improve air circulation. By 1906, Sears , Roebuck, and Co. had opened their headquarters operation in

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