In short: Before computers, accountants kept every record by hand. They wrote entries in large paper ledgers with pen and ink, did sums in their heads or with tools like the abacus, and later used mechanical adding machines. From the 1890s, large organizations also used punch cards and tabulating machines. Finding a mistake often meant … Read more
Short answer: Luca Pacioli was an Italian mathematician and Franciscan friar who lived from about 1447 to 1517. In 1494, he published a large math book called Summa de arithmetica, which included a section explaining double-entry bookkeeping. He did not invent the system, but his book was the first printed guide to it, and it … Read more
Short answer: About 10,000 years ago, farmers in Mesopotamia (mostly present-day Iraq) began using small clay tokens to keep track of goods like grain, oil and sheep. Each shape stood for one kind of item, and one token meant one unit. Over thousands of years, this system grew into sealed clay envelopes, then marks on … Read more