This article looks at the effects of office mechanisation in greater detail by describing data processing innovations in major building societies during the dawn of the computer era. Reference to similar developments in clearing banks, industrial and computer organisations provides evidence as...

Through a detailed examination, using business archives, of the impact of the First World War on cost calculation practices in British firms, this paper examines, and finds wanting, the claim of Loft (1986, 1990) that cost accounting came into the light in Britain during the First World War.