Title page from the second editition of the 'Summa de arithmetica geometria proportioni et proportionalita', by Luca Pacioli. (Venice, 1523) [Library shelfmark: ICAS.F66]
Luca Pacioli's 1494 edition of the 'Summa de arithmetica geometria proportioni et proportionalita' contains the first printed exposition of double-entry bookkeeping.
It appears in the section entitled 'Particularis de computes & scripturis' (beginning on the verso of leaf 198) of Pacioli's mathematical encyclopedia.
This portion of the 'Summa' is the single most influential work in European accounting history, and many of its precepts are still valid.
Pacioli does not claim to have invented double-entry bookkeeping, but maintains that he is merely recording current practice, which he refers to as 'the method of Venice'.
He was a university professor and a close friend of Leonardo da Vinci.