The Internet Archive really needs to update its website. It's not 1998 anymore, you know. I couldn't easily find how to view the book. Then I realised you can only "borrow" it and it is already "borrowed", so it is currently unreadable and tells me "this title is currently checked out."
Unfortunately the math figures didn't survive OCR, so the epub and other text versions are not really readable. Luckily the "read online" version is full-page images and works quite well.
Looks like a nice book, though the writing isn't outstanding. If someone out there is looking for a free calculus textbook, I highly recommend this one: http://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/33283 It's old too, but the writing is very entertaining---the author doesn't take the subjects seriously, but keeps joking around about how everyone takes Calc so seriously.
<shamelessplug>Hm... hm... I wrote a modern calculus book. It's not-free, but very affordable + it comes with physics. v4.1 is coming out next week...</shamelessplug>
The book is "Calculus Made Easy" by Silvanus P. Thompson. I had a copy of this some years ago. He skips delta epsilon proofs entirely and uses the infinitismal method to describe derivatives and integration. Makes for a very slim volume.
Even though there is no materiel difference between the two links, Scribd is a YC company where selling access to copyrighted works is a business model, your link might get you banned.
BTW: The first edition of this book is most certainly out of copyright, Van Nostrad would had to have filed a copyright renewal in 1959 which most did not at the time.
Our college textbook for calculus was Newton's Principia, which I suppose is also somewhat dated. However, I was able to obtain a sound working knowledge of calculus from that. Granted, I updated it a bit with Robinson's 1970s text on nonstandard analysis.
The fundamentals prove to be quite timeless.
I would say that there are advantages and disadvantages to learning from an older text, depending on what you're aiming to learn.
Would you list some of those advantages and disadvantages?
Contrary to the other replies here, Calculus has indeed changed over time, or at least how it's taught. In modern calc texts, there is an emphasis on limits and formal proofs. In old calculus texts, in particular this book, there seems to be an emphasis on intuition over theory.
The question is a difficult one: Is a self-taught student putting themselves at a disadvantage by using an old text as their primary source of knowledge? It's a difficult question because it can only be answered by someone who's read both an old text and a new text, which seems rare. But here's hoping that the HN crowd features someone who's done just that.
Sorry if I am sceptical but I don't really believe your claim that you were able to obtain a sound working knowledge of calculus from the Principia.
For one thing, Newton barely makes use of calculus in the textbook and instead opts for geometric methods. And even with that, he is not rigorous at all because rigor hadn't been discovered yet. I wouldn't even put it on the same level as modern textbooks since so much had yet to be discovered about calculus.
I would not recommend the Principa to anyone except for historical interest. Everything in that book has been said more concisely by other people in the three hundred years since it was published.
That sounds exciting! When you say "I updated it a bit", do you mean that your instructor did it for the whole class, or that you as a student did it independently, or that you were the instructor?
I find Robinson's book pretty hard going, especially for a relatively introductory class, and would be very interested to hear whether or not this impression held for you.
I don't know about recommending the practical-man book; I don't recall him mentioning it elsewhere. He quoted "What one fool can do, another can" (from Calculus Made Easy) I think more than once. I've skimmed Calculus Made Easy and it seems nice, and short.
Someone ought to do Statistics for the Concerned Citizen with an angle on analytics and 'big data' and how these new applications of statistical inference may form part of decision making in the future.
Having said that I have a soft spot for Thompson's text.
https://archive.org/details/calculusforpract00thom