Henry Metcalfe (military officer)

Captain Henry Metcalfe (October 29, 1847 – August 17, 1927) was an officer in the United States Army Ordnance Corps, inventor and early organizational theorist, known for his 1873 invention of a detachable magazine for small arms,[1] for his work on modern management accounting,[2][3] the development of the "time card" and his theory on the role of middle management.

That year he was sequentially stationed at Rock Island Arsenal III, at the Military Academy as assistant professor of Spanish and as aide-de-camp of Major-General Henry W. Halleck.

In 1885 Metcalfe published the book "The Cost of Manufactures and the Administration of Workshops, Public and Private," and presented this work to the American Society of Mechanical Engineers the next year.

A selection of their patent drawings: Specially noted was his belt for firearms, which was called "Means of Attaching Magazines to Fire-Arms" from 1875.

[11] McChristian (2006) explained, that in those years many ammunition-carrying devices were developed but "the looped cartridge belt remained the average soldier's preference.

[12] The type of rifle with the Metcalfe's detachable quick loader and cartridge packing box was presented at the World's Columbian Exposition in 1893.

During the Gettysburg Campaign in 1863, the arsenal had provided tens of thousands of muskets and vast supplies of ammunition for Pennsylvania's "Emergency Militia" regiments.

In Metcalfe's time at the Arsenal, it served as a major site for the storage of weapons and artillery pieces, a depot for the repair of artillery, cavalry and infantry equipment, repair and cleaning of small arms and harnesses, the manufacture of percussion powder and Minié balls, and the testing of new forms of gunpowder and time fuses.

"[16][17] When Metcalfe was appointed Officer in charge at Frankford Arsenal, one specific concern was "being unable to account for costs within the workshops.

Except in the very rudest industries, carried on as if from hand to mouth, all recognize that the present must prepare for the demands of the future, and hence records, more or less elaborate, are kept'.

"[22] Metcalfe had illustrated this basic problem in his 1886 article with a quote from a factory owner and manager in a larger machine shop, which employed some 1,400 people.

In arguing that men intrusted with executive positions be freed from burdensome details, he says: "There is a certain economy of attention by which the more active a man's work, the less he is able of contemplation.

Metcalfe explained: Since the operations of good administration are in their nature gradual, and for their successful issue depend rather upon uniform attention to their progress than upon occasional violent efforts to adjust them to the current of affairs, it will be seen that the most useful teachings are those gained from a continuous record of events...

Chatfield, (1996) explained, that in that time and place "the usual production records were informal memorandum books carried by shop foremen, only the most cursory data were kept on job orders, which were often verbally authorized and were sometimes lost track of entirely.

"[2] In the new system that Metcalfe proposed, should "each material requisition or transfer be recorded on a separate 'shop order card,' which included spaces for pricing the article and for the job number to which it was charged.

"[2] Hugo Diemer (1904) further summarized the essence of the Metcalfe's 1885 work as follows: The main body of the work is devoted to a description and criticism of old systems of arsenal accounting (which will be found even to-day to correspond to methods used in many shops), together with the results of the author's study in devising better methods of organization and accounting.

About the proposed organization Metcalfe declared: I would divide the Arsenal into three general departments, each independent of the other, but all directly dependent upon the Commanding Officer.

For this purpose I propose the use of single cards for all initial records, and their gradual consolidation by the simplest mechanical means until they are finally transcribed into the permanent books of record.The independence of a representative unit of record is the basis of system I propose, combined with the use of a nomenclature by which all acts and their purposes may be set forth by the actors in such form as to be intelligible to those whose proper office it is to enroll and classify them.

On the side of the offices there is a contrary tendency, requiring constant knowledge of how things are going and how similar results, when obtained under different circumstances, compare.

[35]The article continued to stipulate the main problem at the time: It is safe to say that each of these steps in analysis is often attempted, and as often fails from lack of trustworthy data.

If the accountant had the data he might classify them ; but they are known only to the shop; and then only from day to day forgotten as new works comes along.To remedy this, foremen are often required to keep "little books," which can never cover all the ground of subsequent investigation, and which, just so far as they do cover it, turn these foremen into accountants, forcing them into work for which few are fitted, and taking from them time and attention which could be fa better employed.

The link is in the form of a constant current of data composed of independent cards; each one bearing unmistakable evidence of the purpose of the expenditure which it records.

"[22] Another feature of Metcalfe's systems of cost accounting was the so-called "Correspondence Card," (see image) which shows how the order will flow around among the persons in the machine shop.

Metcalfe (1885) explained the card as follow: This card, forming no essential part of the system proposed, is used as a very convenient means of asking and answering the thousand and one little questions constantly arising between the different departments of any large administration, concerning which it is not so essential to have an immediate reply as it is to ask the question or to make the statement while the need of it is fresh in one's mind.

They are memoranda set in motion.One side is blank and the other bears a double column of the titles and their abbreviations belonging to the persons most apt to correspond.

Metcalfe has been generally adopted in Government shops, but, as shown in some of the testimony given before Congressional Investigating Committees, much yet remains to be done in the way of cutting out unnecessary red tape..."[30] After of his 1885 book, in 1886 Metcalfe wrote a paper summarizing his system, which he presented at the XIIIth Annual Meeting of the American Society of Mechanical Engineers in Chicago.

In the following discussion there was a response by Frederick Winslow Taylor,[15] which was published in the Transactions of the American Society of Mechanical Engineers.

We have found that any record which passes through the average workman's hands, and which he holds for any length of time, is apt either to be soiled or torn.

We have, therefore, adopted the system of having our orders sent from the central office to the small offices in the various departments of the works, in each of which there is a clerk who takes charge of all orders received from, and records returned to, the central office, as well as of all records kept in the department...[38]About fifteen years later Taylor in his 1903 Shop management further clarified his history and acknowledged Metcalfe's contributions, stating: The card system of shop returns invented and introduced as a complete system by Captain Henry Metcalfe, U. S. A., in the government shops of the Frankford Arsenal represents another such distinct advance in the art of management.

The writer appreciates the difficulty of this undertaking as he was at the same time engaged in the slow evolution of a similar system in the Midvale Steel Works, which, however, was the result of a gradual development instead of a complete, well thought out invention as was that of Captain Metcalfe.