The History of Accounting
Business 100
Sherika R. Smith
For thousands of years, people have been coming up with ways to advance the accounting concept. Many have tried to develop their own way of measuring accounting. Though it has come along way, I will discuss some of the events that paved the way for accounting history from the past to the present day. First, I will discuss how the first accounting records came about and how writing helped to advance them. Second, I will see how Pacioli developed double entry bookkeeping. Third, I will discuss the rise of goldsmith bankers in England and the founding of the Bank of England. Fourth, we'll look at the first federal income tax. Lastly, we'll end by discussing how the Great Depression played a role in accounting and the regulation of financial accounting.
7500BC
The domestication of livestock and grains started at different sites about the same time. Simple tokens were associated with agricultural sites, clay balls of various shapes representing specific goods (e.g. two round tokens could be a pair of cattle, twelve oval tokens a dozen units of wheat. This was the first representation of inventory and the beginning of the concept of numbers (Besserat,1992).
3200BC
Over the next 5,000 years, accounting records advanced from simple to complex tokens representing inventory, to clay tablets, to the development of abstract symbols, and cuneiform writing in Sumeria. This paralled advances in agriculture, pottery, and textiles, building, war and nation-states (Gary, 1999).
1494
Luca Pacioli stated that three things were needed for merchants to be succ ...