Accountant

In 1494, the Franciscan friar Luca Pacioli published Summa de Arithmetica, Geometria, Proportioni et Proportionalità in Venice, a comprehensive mathematical treatise that included the first printed description of the double-entry bookkeeping system.¹ Pacioli did not invent the method. Merchants in Florence, Genoa, and Venice had been using it for at least two centuries. What he did was codify it in a form that could be taught, replicated, and standardized across commercial enterprises.

The word accountant derives from the Old French aconter, meaning "to reckon," itself from the Latin computare, "to calculate."² In medieval England, the role existed in royal courts, where officers tracked the Crown's revenues and expenses. The separation of accounting as a distinct professional identity, with credentialing and ethical standards, came much later.

1854, Year the world's first professional accounting body was chartered in Edinburgh

Scotland chartered the world's first professional accounting body in 1854, the Institute of Chartered Accountants of Edinburgh, followed by bodies in Glasgow and Aberdeen.³ England and Wales followed with the Institute of Chartered Accountants in 1880. In the United States, the first CPA law was passed in New York in 1896.⁴

The expansion of railroads and joint-stock companies in the nineteenth century created demand for standardized financial reporting. By the early twentieth century, the four largest accounting firms audited the majority of publicly traded companies in the United States and the United Kingdom.

Timeline

• 1494, Luca Pacioli publishes the first printed manual on double-entry bookkeeping in Venice.
• 1854, Scotland charters the world's first professional accounting body in Edinburgh.
• 1880, England and Wales establish the Institute of Chartered Accountants.
• 1896, New York passes the first CPA law in the United States.

Endnotes

1. Luca Pacioli, Summa de Arithmetica, Geometria, Proportioni et Proportionalità (Venice, 1494); see also Jane Gleeson-White, Double Entry: How the Merchants of Venice Created Modern Finance (New York: Norton, 2012).
2. Douglas Harper, "Account," Online Etymology Dictionary.
3. Institute of Chartered Accountants of Scotland, founding history, 1854.
4. American Institute of Certified Public Accountants, "History of the CPA Profession."