Fra Luca Pacioli is the mathematician of Italy who was born on 1445 and died on 1517. It is told that he was friends with famous Leonardo da Vinci, so he was the person who just lived the middle of the Renaissance. This book is a main work of Pacioli. In addition to a mathematics book, it has the honor of the oldest (1494) account book in the world which was printed and published for its description about double accounting. This book called “Summa” for short is 31.5 by 22.3cm, and a one-volume book of 308 dishes. It is said that this book is the writing for the general public, because it was written in Italian not Latin which was mainly used in the publication of those days. There are two kind of version, “Columbia University library’s possession version” and “Nihon University library’s possession version”, in the first edition. Kobe University library possession’s is considered to be near with “Columbia University library possession’s version”.
(Library for Humanities and Social Sciences(9-1-923))
references : Minami, Yuzo “Kohan Keizaisho Kanken” (Kobe Shodai Shinbun 1935.3.20)