Summa de Arithmetica,
Geometria, Proportioni et Proportionalita
CPA,
MBA
Schedule
Biography
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Formal
accounting was invented by a Franciscan friar named Luca Pacioli in
1494 in his paper "Summa de Arithmetica, Geometria, Proportioni et
Proportionalita" ("Everything About Arithmetic, Geometry and
Proportion").
The treatise described double-entry bookkeeping --
that for every credit entered into a ledger there must be a debit, a
concept created by Florentine merchants and hailed by Goethe as "one of
the most beautiful discoveries of the human spirit."
Three
traits shared by successful merchants, Mr. Pacioli wrote, were access
to cash, a constantly updated accounting system and a good bookkeeper.
His contemporary Christopher Columbus apparently knew that: On his
voyage to the New World, he took a royal accountant to track his
"swindle sheet when he started to figure the cost of gold and spices he
would accumulate," according to Alistair Cooke's 1973 book "America."
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