I have no idea who/when/where the 'original' idea came from. I stumbled on it when I was thinking about history and trying to tell how languages or artifacts influenced one another. I remember reading (don't know where) about linguists creating timelines based on when features appeared and capturing the version of that feature at the time it was introduced compared to how it later evolved. Again, a long time ago so no real definitive answers there. A quick search brought this paper up.[1] I just skimmed it and it looks like it has the core idea in it but no promises.
