When did torques and angular velocities become vectors? A historical comedy of errors.

Who discovered the vector properties of moments of forces and angular velocities? Among the many scientists who did, there were some of the greatest mathematical physicists at the turn of the 18th and 19th centuries, like Euler, Lagrange, Laplace, Poinsot, Poisson and Cauchy. Surprisingly, due to scientific rivalries, differences in views and poor communications, it took around three quarters of a century, from 1759 to 1834, to figure out that moments of forces and angular velocities are best represented by directed line segments. The present article relates a cautionary tale about the meanders, the detours and the dead ends of the history of science.