This article describes the development of Captain Henry Metcalfe's card system of cost accounting and production control at Frankford Arsenal in the 1880s. Metcalfe's concern over being unable to account for costs within the workshops at Frankford Arsenal led to influential consultations with private manufacturers and to a series of correspondence with his superiors, in which he described a card system which would apply the principle of "independence offunction," long accepted in machine design, to both the arsenal's workers and books. These unpublished manuscript materials are discussed and Metcalfe shown to be afigure of wider historical interest.
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