Abstract Two college students were working in the accounting laboratory at the university finishing their term problem. One asked the other that he wondered why they use the abbreviation dr. for debit in accounting? He said he could see the sense of cr. for credit, but not dr. for debit." Perhaps such a question has flashed through the minds of countless thinking students who have been unable to pause long enough, in their eagerness to get on with the business of learning to use the techniques of accounting, to permit them to investigate the sources and evolution of such details. Relatively few students of accounting or those who use it in their daily work, on reading the newspaper accounts of the progress of our victorious army in Italy, would be likely to associate that country with the origin of double-entry bookkeeping. However, from all available facts now at hand, we are indebted to Italy for originating double-entry bookkeeping and we know that the basic ideas of the method were in use there no less than six hundred years ago.