Why does a Tone Bender MkII sounds good? half a cent analysis...

[FSFX]

I've learned never to say "first ever". Significant chunks of the iconic Fender 5F6a Bassman were adopted from other brands.

I posed that as a question to solicit responses like yours.
I often find earlier origins of circuits and many transistor ones are just adaptions of tube circuits from way before the discovery of the transistor effect at Bell Labs.

Shea makes for interesting reading and shows just how engineers like him were analysing everything about transistors and their behaviour just a few years after the Bell Labs discovery.
However, none of what I have read or the circuits I see in his 1953 book actually use the same series feedback arrangement for stability. Please correct me if I am wrong and refer me to where you think he does.   

[PRR]

I was just following the citations in Murray's patent. Sometimes a patent cite is totally tangential.

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This page claims the fuzz-riff on "I Can't Get No..." was a placeholder for a saxophone line.
https://www.premierguitar.com/gear/face-the-fuzz-a-beginners-and-skeptics-guide-to-fuzz-pedals

OK, it wudda worked and wudda been forgotten in a week. Even before Henry the Eighth came out.

"Otis Redding's soul-style arrangement featured horns playing the main riff, as Keith Richards had originally intended."
I do not remember Otis' version?? (Yes, I could find it, if I cared....)

[Fancy Lime]

I mean, invention is an incremental process, most of the time. Engineering even more so. Even whoever invented the hammer (pretty sure it was one of Mark's ancestors who passed down their talents) was building on the concept of using a rock to smack stuff. The inventor of the rock knife probably knew sharp rocks, the inventor ot the wheel had seen rolling logs in action. No shame in standing on tall shoulders to reach the high hanging fruit.

Andy

[FSFX]

I mean, invention is an incremental process, most of the time.

Not quite right. invention is meant to be novel and original.

https://dictionary.cambridge.org/dictionary/english/invention

And as you rightly point out, the wheel wasn't actually invented, neither was the hammer or the knife and other things like needles. They were derived from naturally occurring things like logs, rocks, bones, etc.