History :

Accountant
Luca Pacioli published "Summa Arithmetica, Geometria,
Proportioni et Proportionalita" in 1494, explaining the
Venetian merchants' double-entry bookkeeping system.
Pacioli included a 27-page dissertation titled
"Particularis de Computis et Scripturis," or "Details of

1494
Calculation and Recording," in his tome, which
discussed record keeping and double-entry accounting.
For the next several hundred years, his work was used
as a teaching tool and reference material on
bookkeeping and accounting. Historians also remark
that his book was the first to publish plus and minus
symbols (addition and subtraction). As a result, "Summa
Arithmetica" was not only the first known published
work on the subject of double-entry bookkeeping, but it
was also the first known book printed in Italy to
incorporate algebra.

With the introduction of industrial companies,

investors and debtors, while not part of a company's
management, had a vested interest in the company's
results. This attention created a demand for more
advanced cost accounting, which aided in the

1800- 1896
development of accounting as a profession.
Professionalization of accountants began in the
1800s, initially in the United Kingdom and then in the
United States. In the United States, 31 accountants
founded the American Association of Public
Accountants in 1887. A decade later, the first
standardized test for accountants was given, and
the AAPA licensed the first Certified Public
Accountants in 1896.

Prior to the 1929 crash, the US government

attempted to pass legislation to establish a
nationwide standard for accounting among
publicly traded corporations, but no body existed
to monitor or enforce the requirements. President

1916-1929
Franklin D. Roosevelt established the Securities
and Exchange Commission on June 6, 1934,
requiring all publicly traded corporations to
publish quarterly reports verified as truthful by
expert accountants. The first Chairman of the SEC
was Joseph P. Kennedy, the future president's
father. The AAPA was superseded by the Institute
of Public Accountants in 1916.

There has been an upsurge in the demand for

skilled accountants since the SEC's creation. The
financial cost to firms of falsifying records or
failing to keep adequate accounting records is
significant and growing. Companies that
attempt to falsify or conceal financial

2001
information in order to appear financially sound,
such as Enron in 2001, face legal ramifications
and the risk of bankruptcy. Enron was exposed in
2001 for using accounting "tricks" to conceal
billions of dollars in bad debt while artificially
inflating the company's declared revenues.
According to an SEC investigation, the
company's CEO, Jeffrey Skilling, and former CEO
Kenneth Lay were able to keep billions of dollars
of debt off the company's declared balance
sheet.

In 2008, the once-prestigious global

financial services firm Lehman Brothers,
one of the United States' leading
investment banks, was found to have
hidden more than $50 billion in loans as

2008
sales. According to the SEC, the business
sold toxic assets to Cayman Islands
banks with the expectation that Lehman
Brothers would repurchase the assets
within a short period of time. According
to accounting, the bank appeared to
have $50 billion more in cash and $50
billion less in "toxic assets."

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