An Analysis of Selected Calculus Texts

Calculus, one of the powerful tools of mathematics, has some of its origins as early as the times of Archimedes (287-212 B.C.) when he found areas and volumes using the method of exhaustion. Yet, after this early beginning, little progress was made until the seventeenth century. Building on the works of Descartes, Fermat, and others, Leibniz and Newton have been credited with the discovery of calculus at about the same time, but independently of one another. The need for this field arose with the need of a mathematical tool to deal with motion and change concepts the primarily static fields of algebra, geometry, and trigonometry could not handle