The Nunes Spiral and the Prehistory of the Infinitesimal Calculus

The conceptualisation of the rhumb line course in 1537, later called loxodrome, and its approximation by the “noniodrome" in 1566 as a method for calculating the nautical tables of rhumbs, by the Portuguese mathematician Pedro Nunes (1502-1578), were crucial stages of Renaissance mathematics that throughout the following century contributed to stimulate the development of the Infinitesimal Calculus until Edmond Halley's publication in 1696 on the “Doctrine of these Spiral Rhumbs which are of so great concern in the Art of Navigation".