Luca Pacioli Publishes Summa

1494

The Franciscan friar published his encyclopedic Summa de Arithmetica in Venice, including the first printed description of double-entry bookkeeping. The technique had been used in Italian counting houses for centuries; Pacioli made it public. European commerce acquired, in print, the foundational grammar of modern accounting. His friendship with Leonardo produced a collaboration on geometric solids that united mathematics and art in a single manuscript.