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// general

Origin of the word vector

By John Peck
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Lately, I've become interested in the history of vector calculus. The subject is generally considered to have come into existence with the work of Hamilton and Grassmann in the 1840s to 1860s. The Wikipedia article on vector even states that Hamilton coined the word vector as meaning the $(i, j, k)$- part of a quaternion (if I understand correctly).

However, in celestial mechanics the term radius vector seems to have been in use before that time. See this work from 1823 for example: link. The author probably didn't mean a vector the modern sense of the word. Woodhouse speaks of radii vectores being distances set out from a certain center of force.

My question is: who really coined the word vector (in mathematics or mechanics) for the first time? And how is this older sense of the word vector related to the modern concept, if at all?

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