denverappraiser|1479065979|4097890 said:Cut has been a topic for a lot longer than that. Marcel Tolkowsky wrote a book about it in 1919 for example.
H&A started with the Okuda scope in the 1970's Japan. It was a big hit. After a few variations it came to the US in a fairly big way with the Eightstar brand in the 80's. It went 'mainstream' in the 90's.
It's not exactly light reading but here's the entire text of Tolkowsky's book -- Diamond Design. It's amazingly relevant, even today.
http://www.folds.net/diamond_design/index.html