Abstract
The Treviso Arithmetic of 1478 was the first printed book on mathematics. It was soon followed by similar works in other European countries but it was not until 1536 that an Arithmetic appeared in English. Shortly afterwards, Robert Record published his famous Grounde of artes, and the arithmetical textbook was further developed by such writers as Cocker and Walkingame, and finally Pendlebury with his Arithmetic of 1886, still in print in 1957. It was the 1944 Education Act that effectively spelled the end of the arithmetical textbook as such.