Josiah Wedgwood

Josiah Wedgwood built one of the first modern factories, organising his Staffordshire pottery works around a strict division of labour and detailed record-keeping. He used cost accounting to find where money was made and lost, and cut prices to widen his market, a practice that anticipated later mass production. He was also a marketing innovator, using royal patronage, showrooms, and catalogues to build demand. A member of the Lunar Society and a campaigner against the slave trade, he made an anti-slavery medallion that became a symbol of the abolition movement. His methods prefigured the managed factory of the industrial age.