The (measuring the area between them and their perpendicular direction). 3. The "Vector Wars"
The history of isn’t just a dry sequence of formulas; it’s the story of a hundred-year "math war" over how to describe the physical world. 1. The Shadow of Hamilton (1840s) Classical Vector Algebra (Textbooks in Mathemat...
They split quaternion multiplication into two distinct operations: The (measuring the area between them and their
Enter two rebels: (an American) and Oliver Heaviside (an Englishman). Independently, they decided to "vandalize" Hamilton’s work. They took the quaternion, chopped off the "real" part ( ), and focused only on the components. They took the quaternion, chopped off the "real"
Hamilton believed quaternions were the ultimate language of the universe. However, they were incredibly difficult to use. To do simple physics, you had to drag around a complicated four-part number when you really only cared about three-dimensional space. 2. The Great Schism (1880s)