By the late 19th century, scientists were frustrated. had written his famous equations for electromagnetism using quaternions, but they were so dense that almost no one could solve them.
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) Classical Vector Algebra (Textbooks in Mathemat...
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. By the late 19th century, scientists were frustrated
The (measuring the area between them and their perpendicular direction). 3. The "Vector Wars" However, they were incredibly difficult to use
They split quaternion multiplication into two distinct operations: