This is a rather soft question, but I am preparing a short presentation on Volterra's function for an analysis course. Specifically, I'm wondering why was the Volterra's function a big deal during it's day. I know a few years earlier Weierstrass found his function which served as a counter example to Ampere's proof that all continuous functions are differentiable.
I guess a more succinct way to ask my questions is as follows: how do I put Volterra's function into historical context? As of right now it seems to be viewed as something interesting and toy with, a nice intellectual exercise. However, when it was constructed, did it upset a lot of people? Was it controversial? So forth.