Where did the false "equal transit-time" explanation of lift originate from?

$\begingroup$ The popularity of the equal transit-time fallacy is a bit more complicated than a mistake spreading from a single source. It is simple, intuitively appealing (blowing over an airfoil is often invoked, along with an erroneous picture of flow lines around an asymmetric wing), and gets things done quickly. Just like the "explanation" of seasons by the Earth's changing distance to the Sun, or textbook pseudo-explanations of history, like the "crisis" over the discovery of irrationals, or Maxwell's "mathematical" reason for adding an extra term to Ampere's equation. "The truth is what works". Eastwell in Bernoulli? Perhaps, but What about Viscosity? lists the following motivations: "• Simplified Bernoulli explanations are quick, sound logical, and make correct predictions. As Brusca (1986b) said with a sense of satisfaction, the prediction is “in complete agreement with what happens in practice” (p. 15). This would be fabulous if it wasn’t for the fact that these explanation ... Read full article.