[ih] Fwd: History of "accounts"

Miles Fidelman mfidelman at meetinghouse.net
Sat Feb 8 04:30:02 PST 2014


Probably goes back at least as far as the Egyptians - who invented lots 
of things (e.g., surveying) to "account" (root is the same as "count") 
to keep track of fields and grain stores across annual floodings of the 
Nile.  And then there's the whole history of trade and credit in its 
various forms, hence the term "on account."

I expect that if one goes back far enough, one will find that this is a 
case of parallel invention across multiple cultures, during 
pre-historical periods.

Joly MacFie wrote:
> Anyone here want to give Michele further pointers?
>
> j
>
>
> ---------- Forwarded message ----------
> From: *Fred Fuchs* <fred at firesabre.com <mailto:fred at firesabre.com>>
> Date: Fri, Feb 7, 2014 at 10:06 PM
> Subject: Re: [Air-L] History of "accounts"
> To: Michelle Forelle <mcforelle at gmail.com 
> <mailto:mcforelle at gmail.com>>, AoIR-L <air-l at listserv.aoir.org 
> <mailto:air-l at listserv.aoir.org>>
>
>
> On 2/7/2014 7:51 PM, Michelle Forelle wrote:
>
>     Hi all,
>
>     I'm working on a project which requires me to look into the
>     history of the
>     concept of "accounts," as in bank accounts or social media accounts.
>
>
> "Accounts" in computing began in the days of batch processing and 
> timesharing. Here are some related links:
>
> https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Time-sharing
> http://www-formal.stanford.edu/jmc/history/timesharing/timesharing.html
> http://www.princeton.edu/~achaney/tmve/wiki100k/docs/Time-sharing.html 
> <http://www.princeton.edu/%7Eachaney/tmve/wiki100k/docs/Time-sharing.html>
> http://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=880740
> https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Q07PhW5sCEk
> http://www.bobbemer.com/TIMESHAR.HTM
>
> Here's a bit more on banking too:
> https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_banking
> http://money.howstuffworks.com/personal-finance/banking/swiss-bank-account2.htm
> http://www.factmonster.com/ipka/A0801059.html
>
> Good luck,
>
> Fred
>
> -- 
> Fred Fuchs - Founder, CEO, & Producer
> FireSabre Consulting LLC
> Content Services for Virtual Worlds
> Creation, Events, Training, & Simulations
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>
>
>
>
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