By the end of the eighteenth century, British mathematics had been stuck in a rut for a hundred years. Calculus was still taught in the style of Newton, with no recognition of the great advances made in continental Europe. The examination system at Cambridge even mandated the use of Newtonian notation. As discontented undergraduates, Charles Babbage (1791 1871) and John Herschel (1792 1871) formed the Analytical Society in 1811. The group, including William Whewell and George Peacock, sought to promote the new continental mathematics. Babbage's preface to the present work, first published in...