Source
r/math•
cuberail

are there any old (pre-1970s) calculus textbooks available online?

i'm looking for old ( i put pre 1970s in the title but i'd love to see something prior to 1950 if possible) calculus textbooks that might be available online. if you know of any links, please let me know. i find that the older books have much more clarity than new ones. i took it myself in 1980 with the ellis and gulick text, but i'd like something older than that if it's available. i have spivak already.

Posted Jun 10, 2016, 1:57 PM UTC

2914
sleepingsquirrel•

Calculus Made Easy, by Silvanus P. Thompson (1910).

15
sedict•

This actually helped me to get a grasp of the subject before diving into the real thing

2
PmMeYourFeels•

Thank you for sharing. I love the author's philosophy and way of writing. He's so frank, and I completely agree with his Prologue and Chapter 1.

I wish I had this when learning Calculus. I'm now taking upper-division mathematics at the university (ie. all proofs) and this will be a good reference. Like OP, I think many older mathematics books are very easy to read and straightforward.

1
Tharagleb•

There is one from 1943 here.

5
rhlewisAlgebra•

This one is highly regarded. You can get it for $5.00, maybe less if you search around.

https://www.amazon.com/Calculus-Analytic-Geometry-Alternate-George/dp/B000K1UMJS?ie=UTF8&*Version*=1&*entries*=0

3
MadPatAlgebra•

I used an earlier version of this as a freshman in 1960. I still have a version of that edition that I dip into sometimes.

2
MadPatAlgebra•

You can find a PDF of Granville-Smith-and-Longley here. (I guess this was before Longley joined the team.) It has an original copyright of 1904.

I remember using it because it had a very good selection of problems.

3
SeriousSquid•

An impressive number of old mah texts like Legendres geometry text along with a more random selection of semi modern texts are available on archive.org Its easier to go via google though if you know what to look for.

Andrews Number Theory which granted I have in Dover form is for example on there https://archive.org/stream/NumberTheory_862/Andrews-NumberTheory#page/n0/mode/2up and is a pretty good intro-to-reference text.

3
Kafkas_HatLogic•

Apostol's Calculus was published in 1967 and you can find some pdfs of the books through google.

2
morningcoffee1•

In my experience Ebay is by far the best source if you search for "calculus" under Antiquarian & Collectibles. Here is a link

Looking right now there are 150+ results with books from the 1800's. Generally I sort it from highest price to lowest if you are interested in the "real cool" stuff.

I do the same to build a collection of antique astronomy books. Very much fun, but the biggest problem is that in no time you end up spending way too much on your hobby. ;-)

2
memezboi•

Advanced Calculus by Woods from 1934. This is the book that Feynman used to teach himself calculus. http://libgen.io/ads.php?md5=24BAD728AB5C99D87989325372560A4B https://www.scribd.com/doc/206143939/Advanced-Calculus-Woods

1
misplaced_my_pants•

There are a number of dirt cheap Dover texts that teach calculus.

1
fuzzynyanko•

archive.org has many. Unfortunately, they have one of those damned never-ending list scrollers, so finding the early ones can take a lot of time

I did see a few texts from around 1909

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geeked_outHyperbagel•

google com

you can search anything

on google com

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