 W. R. Hamilton introduced quaternions in 1843, and by 1873 W. K. Clifford obtained a broad generalization of these numbers that he called "biquaternions", which is an example of what is now called a Clifford algebra.In 1898 Alexander McAulay used Ω with Ω2 = 0 to generate the dual quaternion algebra.However, his terminology of "octonions" did not stick as today's octonions are another algebra.