Summary: The earliest published instance found of combinatorial quantities later occurring in the work of Vapnik and Chervonenkis (VC) was in a paper of J. Steiner [J. Reine Angew. Math. 1, 349–364 (1826; ERAM 001.0033cj)]. The next, still more pertinent occurrence found was in work of L. Schäfli [Theorie der vielfachen Kontinuität. Basel etc.: Georg & Co. (1901; JFM 32.0294.04)] done around 1850 but not published until 1901, after his death. The nineteenth century work was on subsets of Euclidean spaces cut by intersections of finitely many half-spaces. Then there is another long gap until a paper of T. M. Cover [IEEE Trans. Electron. Comput. 14, 326–334 (1965; Zbl 0152.18206)], who cited Schläfli, in 1965, preceding by a few years the landmark announcement by V. N. Vapnik and A. Ya. Chervonenkis [Sov. Math., Dokl. 9, 915–918 (1968); translation from Dokl. Akad. Nauk SSSR 181, 781–783 (1968; Zbl 0247.60004)] in 1968 and their longer paper of 1971 [Theory Probab. Appl. 16, 264–280 (1971); translation from Teor. Veroyatn. Primen. 16, 264–279 (1971; Zbl 0247.60005); reprint ibid. 11–30 (2015; Zbl 1337.60009)]. Further history is given about Steiner, Schläfli, and some of their contemporary mathematicians and about the initial reception of VC’s work.
For the entire collection see [Zbl 1331.68020].