Editing Octonion (section)

== History ==
The octonions were discovered in December 1843 by [[John T. Graves]], inspired by his friend [[William Rowan Hamilton]]'s discovery of quaternions. Shortly before Graves' discovery of octonions, Graves wrote in a letter addressed to Hamilton on October 26, 1843, "If with your alchemy you can make three pounds of gold, why should you stop there?"<ref name="Baez 2002 loc=p. 1">{{Harv|Baez|2002|loc=p. 1}}</ref>

Graves called his discovery "octaves", and mentioned them in a letter to Hamilton dated 26 December 1843.<ref>{{Cite book |last1=Sabadini |first1=Irene |url=https://books.google.com/books?id=H-5v6pPpyb4C&dq=december%2026,%201843%20octonion&pg=PA168 |title=Hypercomplex Analysis |last2=Shapiro |first2=Michael |last3=Sommen |first3=Franciscus |date=2009-04-21 |publisher=Springer Science & Business Media |isbn=978-3-7643-9893-4 |language=en}}</ref> He first published his result slightly later than [[Arthur Cayley]]'s article.<ref>{{harv|Graves|1845}}</ref> The octonions were discovered independently by Cayley<ref>{{Citation|first=Arthur |last=Cayley|title=On Jacobi's Elliptic functions, in reply to the Rev. Brice Bronwin; and on Quaternions|journal= [[Philosophical Magazine]] |volume=26 |year=1845|issue=172 |pages=208–211|doi=10.1080/14786444508645107|url=https://zenodo.org/record/1431049}}. Appendix reprinted in ''The Collected Mathematical Papers'', Johnson Reprint Co., New York, 1963, p.&nbsp;127</ref> and are sometimes referred to as '''Cayley numbers''' or the '''Cayley algebra'''. Hamilton described the early history of Graves's discovery.<ref>{{citation|last=Hamilton |author-link=William Rowan Hamilton|journal=Transactions of the Royal Irish Academy|volume= 21 |year=1848|pages= 338–341|title=Note, by Sir W. R. Hamilton, respecting the researches of John T. Graves, Esq.|url=https://archive.org/details/transactionsofro21iris}}</ref>