Echoes from the Past: DITA, Help, Single-Sourcing Tools — Looking from the 60s to Today
http://www.idratherbewriting.com/2008/08/04/echoes-from-the-past-dita-help-single-sourcing-tools-looking-from-the-60s-to-today/

Ng, Daniel
I'd Rather Be Writing
2008

Abstract:

The historian of technical communications, R. John Brockmann, researched efforts to document products going back centuries. He finds that some of today’s hottest new documentation ideas were present in the work of those creating, documenting, and selling the technology of manufacturing just after the revolutionary war.