Presenting negative numbers using parentheses: where does this practice come from?

Question

The standard accounting way is always to show negative numbers in parentheses. Where does this practice come from?

For example, this cash flow statement use parentheses indicate negative values:

Answer 1

I'd love to see if someone can find a convincing origin story for the practice, but I believe it became adopted simply because parenthesis stand out more than a negative sign.

Think of a hand-written ledger or balance sheet, an errant dot of the pen could look like a minus sign, or a narrow column could leave too little space for the minus sign to be noticeable. Parenthesis are deliberate and easy to spot while scanning a sheet, so no idea who was the first to do it, but it was effective and caught on.