It’s never wise to assume, right?  So we’ll start with the very basics.

HARDWARE is equipment.  Back in the introduction, you may have noticed some of the advances were equipment upgrades.  Writing with that erasable No. 2 pencil on smooth (cheap) white paper probably would have moved Bob Cratchit to tears.

Computer.  Keyboard.  Mouse.  Server.  And wires.  Lots and lots of wires, right?

SERVER by the way, means a dedicated computer that simply houses information.  Servers are generally used in a business environment when the company’s needs have grown such that multiple users need to access the same information simultaneously, so everybody gets a computer, (also called a terminal,) but all the information is actually kept on a separate computer.  The separate computer is the server.

SOFTWARE is harder to define.  “Anything that is not hardware, but is used with hardware,” says dictionary.com.  Merriam Webster tells us software is “the entire set of programs, procedures, and related documentation associated with a system, and especially a computer system; specifically computer programs.”  Gobbledy-gook.

1494 – Luca Pacioli (Venice, Italy) codified the double-entry system of bookkeeping in a mathematics textbook and earned the title, Father of Accounting and Bookkeeping. Although versions of double-entry accounting can be found for hundreds of years prior, this publication established  both terminology and technique, going so far as to provide sample year-end closing entries and ethical admonishments.  It is interesting to note that Pacioli was a contemporary of Leonarda da Vinci, to whom he taught mathematics, including calculus.  In turn, da Vinci is thought to have illustrated many of Pacioli’s works.

1843 – Charles Dickens (London, England) published A Christmas Carol, introducing Bob Cratchit to the world.  Armed with a simple quill pen and course rag paper, Bob Cratchit became the world’s best-known bookkeeper.  His obvious meticulous care of the numbers in spite of his working conditions (cold, dark, long hours, and with the one of the world’s worst bosses,)