Both these methods, differing from that now employed, are interesting as preliminary steps towards the method of fluxions and the differential calculus.
During this period logarithms were invented, trigonometry and algebra developed, analytical geometry invented, dynamics put upon a sound basis, and the period closed with the magnificent invention of (or at least the perfecting of) the differential calculus by Newton and Leibnitz and the discovery of gravitation.
There has been some discussion as to the fairness of the treatment accorded by Pascal to his rivals, but no question of the fact that his initiative led to a great extension of our knowledge of the properties of the cycloid, and indirectly hastened the progress of the differential calculus.
He soon commenced to read the Principia, and at sixteen he had mastered a great part of that work, besides some more modern works on analytical geometry and the differential calculus.
He studied the properties of the cycloid, and attempted the problem of its quadrature; and in the "infinitesimals," which he was one of the first to introduce into geometrical demonstrations, was contained the fruitful germ of the differential calculus.
