History of Accounting - Latest Articles
Step right up to the Great Accounting Ride. No crowds.…
Accounting may be as old as civilization. As wealth was…
Unlike most other modern professions, accounting has a history that…
In the first century after its publication, the Summa was translated into five languages, and numerous books on double entry bookkeeping appeared in Dutch, German, English and Italian whose descriptions were obviously lifted from “De Computis.” Many consider these works inferior explanations of the system so clearly articulated by Pacioli.
One historian has described the works issued during this period as, “at the best, revisions of Pacioli, at the worst servile transcriptions without even the courtesy of referring to the original author.” Nevertheless, they helped quickly spread the knowledge of the “Italian method”…
[Excerpts in this section from Richard Brown’s 1905 Treatise, “A History of Accounting and Accountants,” courtesy of the publisher.] It is not unfitting that when we come to deal with the modern profession of accountant, Scotland should occupy the place of priority. It is there that the Chartered Accountant originated, and in Scotland we find the oldest existing societies of public accountants. We are not unmindful of the claims of Italy, to which country we are indebted for so much in connection with the profession, but however important a position accountants occupied there during…
George Watson (1645-1723), one of the early Scottish accountants, trained in Holland and passed along instructional materials used by his fellow professionals. By the middle of the19th century, England was in the midst of prosperous times brought on by the Industrial Revolution. It was the leading producer of coal, iron and cotton textiles, and was the financial center of the world. With this financial surge came a demand for accountants, both for the healthy concerns and those companies declaring bankruptcy in the midst of the competition.
In 1880, the newly formed Institute of…
However prosperous, the United States was still an infant nation when the American Institute of Certified Public Accountants was formed. The Civil War ended with the U.S. still a predominantly farming-based economy. It was only the year before that the Apache chief Geronimo had surrendered to the federal authorities. The ensuing decades saw enormous economic growth as industry began to overtake agriculture in financial importance.
This period of growth also saw its share of financial scandals. Over-capitalization and stock speculation caused financial panics in 1873 and 1893. Watered railroad stocks were in the…
