Accounting History
Accounting History
The name that looms largest in early accounting history is Luca Pacioli, who in 1494 first described the system of double-entry bookkeeping used by Venetian merchants in his “Summa de Arithmetica, Geometria, Proportioni et Proportionalita.”
Of course, businesses and governments had been recording business information long before the Venetians. But it was Pacioli who was the first to publish the system of debits and credits used in journals and ledgers that is still the basis of today's accounting systems. Much of the terminology still used today such as debits, credits, journal, and ledgers originated with Pacioli.