Abstract Early writers on bookkeeping were intent upon giving instruction in the bookkeeping practice of the day and indulged in very little theorizing. The writers did not enter into explanations of how transactions should be thought out or why one did thus and so, but confined themselves strictly to telling in detail how to perform the acts of record-keeping. An attempt to formulate the early reasoning involved in analyzing transactions into debits and credits must therefore be hypothesized out of the phraseology used and by trying to read between the lines of the practical explanations of how the record was to be made. Just how that record was first expanded to include impersonal accounts is unknown. But it seems not improbable that the impulse came from traders rather than bankers, although the two occupations merged into each other much more then than now. It seems quite reasonable to aspect that when the use of ledger accounts was extended into trade, the incompleteness of the record would become much more apparent.
A. C. Littleton. (Tue,) studied this question.