The History of Information (III)
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A waste book was one of the books traditionally used in bookkeeping . It comprised a daily diary of all transactions in chronological order. [ 1 ] It differs from a daybook in that only a single waste book is kept, rather than a separate daybook for each of several categories. The waste book was intended for temporary use only; the information needed to be transcribed into a journal in order to begin to balance one's accounts. [ 2 ] The name of the book derives from the fact that, once its information was transferred to the journal, the waste book was unneeded. [ 3 ] The use of the waste book has declined with the advent of double-entry accounting .
Why Study Accounting History? The history of accounting is as old as civilization, key to important phases of history, among the most important professions in economics and business, and fascinating. Accountants participated in the development of cities, trade, and the concepts of wealth and numbers. Accountants invented writing, participated in the development of money and banking, invented double entry bookkeeping that fueled the Italian Renaissance, saved many Industrial Revolution inventors and entrepreneurs from bankruptcy, helped develop the confidence in capital markets necessary for western capitalism, and are central to the information revolution that is transforming the global economy. There are no household names among the accounting innovators; in fact, virtually no names survive before the Italian Renaissance.
John Harrison (24 March 1693 – 24 March 1776) was a self-educated English carpenter and later a clockmaker . He invented the marine chronometer , a long-sought device in solving the problem of establishing the East-West position or longitude of a ship at sea, thus revolutionising and extending the possibility of safe long distance sea travel in the Age of Sail . The problem was considered so intractable that the British Parliament offered a prize of £ 20,000 (comparable to £2.87 million in modern currency) for the solution. [ 1 ] [ 2 ]
The Calendar (New Style) Act 1750 (c.23) (also known as Chesterfield's Act after Philip Stanhope, 4th Earl of Chesterfield ) is an Act of the Parliament of Great Britain . It reformed the calendar of England and British Dominions so that a new year began on 1 January rather than 25 March ( Lady Day ) and would run according to the Gregorian calendar , as used in most of western Europe . [ edit ] Reasons for change
A calendar is a system of organizing days for social, religious, commercial, or administrative purposes. This is done by giving names to periods of time , typically days , weeks , months , and years . A date is the designation of a single, specific day within such a system. Periods in a calendar (such as years and months) are usually, though not necessarily, synchronized with the cycle of the sun or the moon . Many civilizations and societies have devised a calendar, usually derived from other calendars on which they model their systems, suited to their particular needs. A calendar is also a physical device (often paper).
The Gregorian calendar , also called the Western calendar and the Christian calendar , is internationally the most widely accepted and used civil calendar . [ 1 ] [ 2 ] [ 3 ] It has been the unofficial global standard for decades, adopted for pragmatic interests of international communication, transportation, and commercial integration, and recognized by international institutions such as the United Nations and the Universal Postal Union . [ 4 ] The calendar was a reform in 1582 to the Julian calendar . [ 5 ] The motivation for the reform was to bring the date for the celebration of Easter to the time of the year in which the First Council of Nicaea had agreed upon in 325. Because the spring equinox was tied to the celebration of Easter, the Roman Catholic Church considered this steady movement in the date of the equinox undesirable. The reform was adopted initially by the Catholic countries of Europe.
Manuel Castells ( Spanish : Manuel Castells Oliván ; born 1942, Hellín , Albacete , Spain ) is a Spanish sociologist especially associated with research on the information society , communication and globalization . The 2000–09 research survey of the Social Sciences Citation Index ranks him as the world’s fifth most-cited social science scholar, and the foremost-cited communication scholar. [ 1 ] He was awarded the 2012 Holberg Prize , [ 2 ] for having "shaped our understanding of the political dynamics of urban and global economies in the network society." [ 3 ] [ edit ] Life
The term Network Society describes several different phenomena related to the social, political, economic and cultural changes caused by the spread of networked, digital information and communications technologies. A number of academics (see below) are credited with coining the term since the 1980s and several competing definitions exist. The intellectual origins of the idea can be traced back to the work of early social theorists such as Georg Simmel who analyzed the effect of modernization and industrial capitalism on complex patterns of affiliation, organization, production and experience. [ edit ] Origins
Lady Mary Wortley Montagu (15 May 1689 – 21 August 1762) was an English aristocrat and writer. Montagu is today chiefly remembered for her letters, particularly her letters from Turkey, as wife to the British ambassador, which have been described by Billie Melman as “the very first example of a secular work by a woman about the Muslim Orient”. [ 1 ] [ edit ] Early life Lady Mary Pierrepont was born in London on May 15, 1689; her baptism took place on May 26 at St.
The first issue of the Journal des sçavans (title page) The Journal des sçavans (later renamed Journal des savants ), established by Denis de Sallo , was the earliest academic journal published in Europe. Its content included obituaries of famous men, church history, and legal reports. [ 1 ] The first issue appeared as a twelve page quarto pamphlet [ 2 ] on Monday, 5 January 1665. [ 3 ] This was shortly before the first appearance of the Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society , on 6 March 1665. [ 4 ] The journal ceased publication in 1792, during the French Revolution , and, although it very briefly reappeared in 1797 under the updated title Journal des savants , it did not re-commence regular publication until 1816. From then on, the Journal des savants became more of a literary journal , and ceased to carry significant scientific material. [ 1 ] [ 5 ]
Joseph Moxon (8 August 1627 - February 1691 [ 1 ] ), hydrographer to Charles II , was an English printer of mathematical books and maps, a maker of globes and mathematical instruments , and mathematical lexicographer . He produced the first English language dictionary devoted to mathematics. In November 1678, he became the first tradesman to be elected as a Fellow of the Royal Society . [ edit ] Life Between the ages of around 9 and 11, Moxon accompanied his father, James Moxon, to Delft and Rotterdam where he was printing English Bibles.
Cover of the first volume of Phil. Trans. , covering the years 1665 and 1666 The Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society ( Phil. Trans. ) is a scientific journal published by the Royal Society of London. It was established in 1665, [ 1 ] making it the first journal in the world exclusively devoted to science, and it has remained in continuous publication ever since, making it the world's longest-running scientific journal.
John Graunt (24 April 1620 – 18 April 1674) was one of the first demographers , though by profession he was a haberdasher . Born in London , the eldest of seven or eight children of Henry and Mary Graunt. His father was a draper who had moved to London from Hampshire. In February 1641, Graunt married Mary Scott, with whom he had one son (Henry) and three daughters. Graunt, along with William Petty , developed early human statistical and census methods that later provided a framework for modern demography. He is credited with producing the first life table , giving probabilities of survival to each age.
In the philosophy of science , a protoscience is a new science trying to establish its legitimacy. [ 1 ] Protoscience is distinguished from pseudoscience by its standard practices of good science, such as a willingness to be disproven by new evidence, or to be replaced by a more predictive theory. [ citation needed ] Compare fringe science , which is considered highly speculative or even strongly refuted. [ 2 ] Some protosciences go on to become an accepted part of mainstream science . [ 3 ] All sciences would have qualified as protosciences before the Age of Enlightenment , since the scientific method still hadn't been developed, and there was no structured way to prove legitimacy. A standard example is alchemy , which from the 18th century became chemistry , or pre-modern astrology which from the 17th century became astronomy . [ edit ] Definitions
Robert Boyle , FRS , (25 January 1627 – 31 December 1691) was a 17th-century natural philosopher , chemist , physicist , and inventor, also noted for his writings in theology . He has been variously described as Irish, English and Anglo-Irish , his father having come to Ireland from England during the time of the Plantations . Although his research clearly has its roots in the alchemical tradition, Boyle is largely regarded today as the first modern chemist, and therefore one of the founders of modern chemistry , and one of the pioneers of modern experimental scientific method .