Once Upon Accounting

Abstract

Commercial Court of Paris, Sixth Chamber Hearing of February 21, 1870 Vrain-lucas affair- fraud and breach of trust committed against M. Michel Chasles, member of the institute- sale of 27,000 false autographs “…the accused sold to M. Chasles in part, what he presented as being autographs of various illustrious persons, and in part, copies of very old writings coming from these persons, an important series of hand-written pieces, all of which had been fabricated by himself, and which were paid to him by M. Chasles for more than 140,000 francs.” Member of the Academy of Sciences, professor at Polytechnic, Officer of the Legion of Honour…. M. CHASLES (1793-1880), recognized as one of the most enlightened of minds was swindled by forger M. Vrain-Lucas who managed to sell to him as “authentic” Cleopatra’s letters to Caesar, Jules César’s letters to the Gallic chief, and more…all of it written in Old French, on paper (unknown at the time), where the watermark of a fleur de lys could be seen. Yet perhaps even more serious, in his main field of expertise, he considered as authentic a letter from Blaise Pascal using mathematical formulas yet unknown at his time. M. Chasles, amorous of history, got carried away by his passion to the point of losing all critical reasoning. Do we not find a common thread in the thesis of Professor Mattesich as to the existence of a form of double-entry accounting in Mesopotamia during the 4th Millennium BC?

Keywords

• Clay accounting, Accounting artifacts.