  The existence of an infinite set of conserved currents in completely
integrable classical models, including chiral and Toda models as well as the KP
and self-dual Yang-Mills equations, is traced back to a simple construction of
an infinite chain of closed (respectively, covariantly constant) 1-forms in a
(gauged) bi-differential calculus. The latter consists of a differential
algebra on which two differential maps act. In a gauged bi-differential
calculus these maps are extended to flat covariant derivatives.
