Cost accounting is not old by several centuries as is mercantile bookkeeping by double entry. It is, in fact, of quite recent origin, essentially a product of the nineteenth century, which has been greatly extended and developed in the twentieth.... Cost accounting, therefore, is one of the many consequences of the industrial revolution.1

Accounting has been developed to furnish management with better means of control than have been available in the past. This accounting was done through a development of internal accounts. Before the Industrial Revolution, accounting was mainly a record of the external relations of one business unit with other business units, a record of relations determined in the market. With the advent of large scale productive operations ... necessity arose for more emphasis upon the accounting for interests within the com petitive unit and the use of accounting records as a means of administrative control over the enterprise...

Though instances to suggest the contrary may be found, most merchants of the period we are considering did not use their bookkeeping, whether by double entry or otherwise, to keep a regular and accurate check on their capital and profits.... Double entry bookkeeping, to the extent that it was adopted in practice, could bring order and system to such records and so contribute to the methods of business life.... The writings of the accountants contain some evidence to show that they were aware of those special properties of double entry that some economic historians have regarded as important in the development of capitalism. On the other hand, the evidence of early bookkeeping techniques gives little support to the views summarized at the opening of this study . . . Moreover, it is quite likely that double entry bookkeeping came to be accepted by teachers and accountants as the standard or desirable system of bookkeeping, and that their influence and employment helped to introduce its use.... If this were so, then indeed double entry bookkeeping may have been, in small measure an external influence on business practice. 4

While not concerned altogether with industrial or cost accounting, the records kept by Genoese ships' scribes in the twelfth and thirteenth centuries are interesting as indicating the early development of costing problems. The work and accounts of the scribe (really a sort of supercargo, or in modern terms, a purser) have been briefly described by E. H. Byrne. 8The joint venture type of organization was used extensively, and some of the contracts between ship proprietors and merchants which have been preserved indicate that accurate records and accounts of the voyages were an absolute necessity if the shares of expenses and incomes were to be successfully accounted for. Some of the voyages were sponsored by as many as 25 persons, and in view of the complicated nature of the trade, even in the earlier period the patrons employed a clerk to record the expenses and incomes of the trip. "By the thirteenth century the responsibilities and burdens of accounting were so great th

Some common words found in the essay are:
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Approximate Word count = 1418
Approximate Pages = 6 (250 words per page double spaced)