Commutativity and collinearity: a historical case study of the interconnection of mathematical ideas. Part I

This two-part paper investigates the discovery of an intriguing and fundamental connection between the famous but apparently unrelated mathematical work of two late third-century mathematicians, a link that went unnoticed for well over 1500 years. In this, the first installment of the paper, we examine the initial chain of mathematical events that would ultimately lead to the discovery of this remarkable link between two seemingly distinct areas of mathematics, encompassing contributions by a variety of mathematicians, from the most distinguished to the relatively unknown.