  Newton, in notes that he would rather not have seen published, described a
process for solving simultaneous equations that later authors applied
specifically to linear equations. This method that Euler did not recommend,
that Legendre called "ordinary," and that Gauss called "common" - is now named
after Gauss: "Gaussian" elimination. Gauss's name became associated with
elimination through the adoption, by professional computers, of a specialized
notation that Gauss devised for his own least squares calculations. The
notation allowed elimination to be viewed as a sequence of arithmetic
operations that were repeatedly optimized for hand computing and eventually
were described by matrices.
