about Clebsch’s idea for removing higher-order singularities by exploiting the birational mapping of a plane to a cubic surface, as first presented in [@Clebsch1866]. Klein had only recently returned from his journey to the United States, during which he delivered his famous [*Evanston Colloquium Lectures*]{} [@Klein1894].

The first of these lectures dealt directly with the work of Clebsch and included these remarks about the above theorem:

> Clebsch begins his whole investigation on the consideration of what he takes to be the most general type of an algebraic curve, and this [*general curve*]{} he assumes as having only double points, but no other singularities. To obtain a sure foundation for the theory, it must be proved that any algebraic curve can be transformed rationally into a curve having only double points. This proof was not given by Clebsch; it has since been supplied by his pupils and followers, but the demonstration is long and involved. [@Klein1894 4]

Here Klein cited the two papers [@B-N1874] and [@Noether1884]. Presumably, he had never studied these papers very carefully, so that when he read Bertini’s note, which claimed to give the first real proof of this theorem, he realized that the assertion he had 