A COMMENT ON SOME REMARKS BY HISTORIANS OF COST ACCOUNTING ON ENGINEERING CONTRIBUTIONS TO THE SUBJECT

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.