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This paper studies the history of the “learning curves”, a managerial technology based on an assumed correlation between experience accumulation and variation in production costs that has had a considerable impact on the evolution of management theories and practices. It particularly focuses on the link between the development and diffusion of this technology and the context of the war. It shows how this technology, which emerged from the rapid development of the aeronautical industry in the interwar period, became a true “weapon of war” during World War II, enabling rationalization and anticipation of the war effort. Its subsequent developments, from its growing success during the post-war boom to its “crisis” in the 1970s, mirror the trajectory of American industry as it gradually freed itself from a cycle that was characterized by the maintenance of structures inherited from the war.