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Jerome Lee Nicholson, Richard F. Taylor

Accounting Historians Notebook

Born in 1862, Jerome Lee Nicholson, often called the father of cost accounting, entered the professional practice of accountancy in New York in 1889, under his own name. The firm name was later changed to J. Lee Nicholson and Company when he took in others as partners. Nicholson's firm specialized in the development of cost systems and procedures for manufacturing organizations. For thirty-five years this firm was his base of operations for the accomplishment of his personal goal in accounting: convincing the business community and the practicing accounting profession that cost accounting is perhaps the most fundamental proposition in all …