Felix Klein, Sophus Lie, contact transformations, and connexes (Q6100769)

In their early works, Felix Klein and Sophus Lie lay the foundations of much of their later works. In Klein's case, it is the consideration of geometric objects while Lie worked on properties preserved by systems of transformations. Lie later called some of this transformations \textit{contact transformations} which became the core of his theory of transformation groups applied to differential equations. The present paper follows Klein's attempts in the 1870s to interprete contact transformations in terms of what he called \textit{connexions}, a notion introduced by Clebsch. Over the following decades Klein traces this interpretation under a false assumption. The paper follows the events in great detail and gives important insights.