Henry Metcalfe (military officer)  Captain Henry Metcalfe (October 29, 1847 – August 17, 1927) was an American Army ordnance officer, inventor and early organizational theorist, known for his 1873 invention of a detachable magazine for small arms, for his work on modern management accounting, the development of the "time card" and his theory on the role of middle management. Metcalfe was born in New York, where his father Dr. John Thomas Metcalfe was attending physician to Bellevue Hospital Center. His father was former American Army ordnance officer, and later became professor of institutes and practice of medicine at the New York University. Metcalfe graduated on June 15, 1868, from West Point Military Academy, and was commissioned into the Ordnance Corps. Metcalfe started his military career as assistant ordnance officer at the Ordnance Bureau in Washington, D.C., in early 1869. 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. After a -month leave of absence in 1870, he was appointed executive ordnance assistant at Springfield Armory on November 11, 1870. There he developed several improvements for small firearms for which he obtained a series of patents. On June 23, 1874, he was promoted to first lieutenant. In 1875, he was inspector at the small arms manufacturing at Providence Tool Company for three months. The next two years he participated in the presentation of the U.S. Ordnance Department at the Centennial Exposition in Philadelphia. Metcalfe superintendented the construction of the U.S. Government Building, took charge of the Ordnance Exhibit, and represented the Executive Departments of the U.S. government as Executive officer of the Board. From late 1877 until late 1881 Metcalfe was Assistant Ordnance Officer at Frankford Arsenal, where he started developing a new shop order system and conducted time and motion studies. From late 1878 to late 1881 he was also Inspector of contract small-arms ammunition. On March 4, 1879 he was promoted to the rank of Captain. From late 1881 to late 1884 he was Assistant Ordnance Officer at Benicia Arsenal in Benicia, California, and from 1884 to August 1886 Assistant Ordnance Officer at the Watervliet Arsenal in Watervliet, New York. 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.