Editor’s note: This is part one of a four-part series about the history of quality. For a description of the later years of the quality movement, see part two, part three, and part four.

Joseph Juran’s A History of Managing for Quality (ASQ Quality Press, 1995) traced the history of quality management back to the time when the pyramids were built in Egypt. However, until the advent of the industrial revolution, when mass production also appeared, quality management involved little more than craftsmen checking their own work.

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