Accounting measurements, profit, and loss: a science fiction play in one act by Harold C. Edey

ABSTRACT This study presents a hereto-unpublished one-act play used during an annual three-day ‘residential course’ put on by the Department of Accounting at the London School of Economics and Political Science (LSE) in the late 1950s. The original author of this play, Harold C. Edey, is one of the intellectual forerunners in the development of British accounting thought. The aim of his exercise was to explore the problem of profit determination during a period of changes in specific and general prices. Reproducing this play contributes to our understanding of the development of accounting thought and teaching at the LSE in the period after the Second World War (1939–1945). To contextualise the play, the study traces the history of the LSE and of the author, as well as some of the concepts from the accounting measurement literature that would have been familiar to students attending the three-day residential course.