ABSTRACT
About the middle of the 19th century accounting, which had existed for centuries or even millenia, as a rather dull and obscure occupation, began its rapid transition to its present position as one of the most influential professions of modern civilisation. The need to deal with the problems to which the industrial revolution as it gathered momentum gave rise in the ancillary fields of record-keeping and finance is the basic reason why an independent accountancy profession began to emerge at that particular time. The need to provide this attest function, now one of the main functions of the public accountant, was not, however, the immediate stimulus to the development of a separate accounting profession. In Edinburgh the earliest directories show about one in three of the entrants as following a profession, while only one in eight could be classified as a business man.
