INTRODUCTION TO QUATERNIONS

Macmillan, London, 1884, Second Edition, reprint of 1882 Second Edition, as a 40 page catalogue is bound in at back of book dated March 1884.  Hard cover, 232 pages including Appendix, followed by the catalogue.  Green pebbled cloth over boards, blind ruled front and back, with gilt lettering on spine.  Discolouration at lower front corner; corners are bumped and worn with some board exposed at tips; spine ends bumped and worn with tiny tears and losses to cloth; small chips along rear spine edge and bottom rear board edge; 1½” tear to cloth along rear mid spine edge with a touch of fraying.  Binding cracked in spots with all pages secure; slight lean.  London bookseller’s label neatly affixed at bottom edge of front paste-down.  Non-tape repair to bottom margin of p. 7; remainder of interior clean and unmarked.  ‘We are then to consider how it is possible to frame a new science which shall spring out of Arithmetic, Algebra, and Geometry, and shall add to them the idea of motion – of transference. … What the nineteenth century has done then, is to divorce addition from multiplication in the new form in which the two are presented, and to cause the one, in this new character, to signify motion forwards and backwards, the other motion round and round.’ (from Introductory)