Comment on some remarks by historians of cost accounting on engineering contributions to the subject

              The Accounting Historians Journal Vol. 11, No. 1 Spring 1984
Richard
Vangermeersch UNIVERSITY OF RHODE ISLAND
A COMMENT ON SOME REMARKS BY HISTORIANS OF COST ACCOUNTING ON ENGINEERING CONTRIBUTIONS TO THE SUBJECT
Abstract: M. C. Wells wrote in Accounting for Common Costs that engineering impacts on cost accounting had ended by 1910. This paper reports the results of a review of the Accountants' Index from 1920 through 1949 for engineering sources listed under the general category of the two sections of "Cost and Factory Accounting" and "Depreciation, Depletion, and Obsolescence." The results show that engineering sources on these topics peaked late during the decade that began in 1910 and did not become insignificant until the 1930s.
Two studies in the history of cost accounting have commented on engineering literature and cost accounting topics. M. C. Wells re-ported that "whereas literally hundreds of articles and books on costing and accounting were published by engineers during the 30 years prior to 1910, very little was published after that date."1 Paul Garner wrote that "industrial engineers, rather than cost or general accountants, took a more active interest in costing prob-lems in the early development of the subject in this country."2 This author decided to investigate the cutoff date of engineering contri-butions to the accounting literature. The author's interest in this topic developed while conducting research on engineering input into accounting decisions of capital intensive firms. To establish the cutoff date of engineering contributions to accounting litera-ture, the author counted the engineering articles and books refer-enced in the "Cost and Factory Accounting" and the "Depreciation, Depletion, and Obsolescence" sections of the Accountants' index from 1920 through 1949. These two classifications of "Cost and Fac-tory Accounting" and "Depreciation, Depletion, and Obsolescence" are, in the author's view, the two most likely classifications within the Accountants' Index to include inputs from engineering journals and books. The study was limited to the Accountants' Index be-cause it is the focal point for literature search in accounting. How-ever, the engineering articles and books referenced by the Account-