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Calculus is a mathmatica that has been around for a very long time. It originated
back in Greece where it took early shape. The Greeks began to create numbers
out of ratio's of integers, but it left them with a number line that was incomplete.
So, in order to fill in the gaps in this number line, they created equations and
formulas. This was the beginning of this complicated mathmatical practice.
Next came along Archimedes who created the approximate number of Pi by using
exhaustion (expanding a shape to account for more and more area of a given object)
in a circle containing many, many triangles. This led to the discovery of this number
(3.142 approximately) and also many formulas pertaining to the circle such as volume and surface area.
Calculus died off for a long time until it was resurrected by the astronomer Kepler
in his attempt to find the area of the sectors of an ellipse. However, he was lucky
to come out with a right equation after he made two random cancellations to get to
his product. Next came the three mathmaticians Fermat, Roberval and Cavalieri.
Cavalieri expanded on Kepler's attempts at Integration and concluded with this
"Method of Indivisibles" saying that an area of an object was made up of many
lines that were "indivisible". Roberval and Fermat followed suit of Cavalieri and
created formulas to aid in Integration.
The next person to come along that changed the world of mathmatics was Isaac
Newton. He created relations between (y'),(x') and (y),(x) stating ideas about linear
flow and flux and how they all coordinated together to form equations for motion
and time. Newton, after experiencing trouble with the publishing company (one had
gone out of business that had published mathmatics books so all were afraid to
publish them), he released his book (after it circulated for 42 years) called Analysis
with infinite series in 1711.
The book that Newton put out concentrated mostly on the ideas that the series of
expansion for sin(x) and cos(x) was actually the exponential function, or what is
known today as e^x. After Newton came Leibniz who continued to study the
variables (x) and (y) stating that they represented a group of closely placed numbers
on a line. Following Leibniz and Newton were Jacob Bernoulli and Johann Bernoulli,
who studied the art of calculus until it became under heavy scrutiny for its "outlandish
ideas". However, calculus has been proven to be a legitimate mathmatica and is still
being studied today in labs, colleges, high schools and homes around the world today.
-To view a more in depth history of calculus click here
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