Ingles - Historia De La Contabilidad

Unit 1: HISTORIC BACKGROUND OF ACCOUNTING

Topic 1. Reading

Man, since early times, has struggled to satisfy his requirements for making a living. Little by little, these requirements became greater and greater, and the interchange of goods among individuals was necessary. As a result of this, trading began to appear. Simultaneously, numerical records of some kind began to arise, too.

Evidences of the above statement are the discoveries made by archeologists, such as bricks inscribed by cuneiform characters in Babylon, detailed accounts for farms and states, in Greece and Rome and the tribute roll of Moctezuma, in a pre-Columbian North America. This roll gave an account, in a pictorial way, of beadwork, feather work, weapons, and food, which constituted the tribute of other Mexican nations to Moctezuma.

Nevertheless, these and many singular records are not accounting records in the modern sense. Accounting, from the modern accountants point of view, really began with the development of the commercial republics of Italy.

Massari of Genoa, in 1340, was the first to keep doble entry books, this information being contained in Edward Peragollo’s book Origen and Evolution of Double Bookleeping.

However, the first printed text, containing accounting and including the double entry system, known to exist is that of Luca Pacioli (1445-1514), Summa de Arithmetica, Geometria, Proportione e Proportionalitate. Pacioli was a true representative of the scientific culture at the time of the Italian Renaissance. He taught at monasteries, universities, and royal courts, and he wrote the book in 1494.

Some centuries later, in 1776, the industrial revolution arose beginning in Great Britain. A series of inventions in a large number of industries took place. It then became necessary ti improve accounting techniques and systems and establish new ones.

At present, changes in political and economic organizations based upon the interests and needs of society, have given rise to an important increase in technology.

So far as accounting is concerned, a new system of data processing, based on accounting principles and accomplished by means of electronic computers, has been used in recent years. “Data” is a synonym for “information” and “processing” is a synonym of “handling”.

Nowadays, a great number of institutions of various types use this system.

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