BORGO (Pietro). LIBRO de Abacho. Vinetia. 1561.

BORGO (Pietro). LIBRO de Abacho. Vinetia. 1561.
BORGO (Pietro)
LIBRO de Abacho. Vinetia: per Francisco de Leno, 1561.

A6, B-M8, N4; 100 ff.; 210 mm.

First published in Venice in 1484, it is the second treatise on commercial arithmetic to be published in Italy, but considered the most important. We know little about the author, only that he was a Venetian and that he probably died after 1494. His work, however, endured, having been successively published for more than a century after its original edition, becoming known no less than 16 editions from Venetian presses for the 15th and 16th centuries alone, namely, in 1494, 1488, 1501, 1505, 1509, 1517, 1528, 1534, 1540, 1550, 1551, 1560, 1561, 1567 and 1577. The first three editions were revised by the author, showing minor differences. At a pivotal moment in Universal history, when the world was beginning to open up to new territories, peoples and trade, Borgo's work had as its main objective the education of Venetian merchants, without any interest in academicism. Quite complete and not at all easy, it had everything a young merchant needed to learn to face the challenges of these new times. For this reason, the work is characterized by operations with integrals, fractions and compound numbers, the measurements used by merchants and typical mercantile problems. Very rare and important.

¶ Smith, David Eugene. “The First Great Commercial Arithmetic.” Isis 8, no. 1 (1926): 41–49. http://www.jstor.org/stable/223673.