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Pre-Industrial Revolution: Nineteenth-Century During The High Middle-Age

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1000 – 1900: Origins

The word 'office' stems from the Latin 'officium'. This was not necessarily a place, but rather an often-mobile 'bureau', which was more about human staff, or even the abstract notion of formal position, such as a magistrate.
The office dates back to classical antiquity, and often formed part of a palace complex or a large temple. These spaces, usually containing scrolls and books or tomes, were the rooms in which scribes and priests did their work. Often classified as libraries by archaeologists due to their association with literature, rooms like these were in fact true offices as the scrolls were meant for record keeping and other management function such as treaties, and not for writing or keeping poetry or other works of fiction (Wikipedia [s.a]:1).

Pre-Industrial Revolution: 11th – 17th Centuries …show more content…

The rooms of the chancery often had walls full of pigeonholes, constructed to hold rolled up pieces of parchment for safekeeping or ready reference, a precursor to the book shelf. The introduction of printing during the Renaissance did not change these early government offices much, other than increasing the floor area to accommodate these large machines (Wikipedia [s.a]:5). As mercantilism became the dominant economic theory of the Renaissance, merchants conducted their business in the same buildings, which included retail sales, warehousing and clerical work. Thus, by the 15th century, population density in many cities reached the point where stand-alone buildings were used by merchants to conduct their

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