Mark Adler, co-author of the zlib compression library and gzip, has provided the definite (historical) answer to this simple question. As he further adds to th

Mark Adler, co-author of the zlib compression library and gzip, has provided the definite (historical) answer to this simple question. As he further adds to the question: I am the reference, having been part of all of that. This post could be cited in Wikipedia as an original source.