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by capableweb 1355 days ago
In that vein, earliest mention of UUID I could find (thanks Apollo Archives):

> 2.4 Unique Identifiers

> An important aspect of NCA is its use of universal unique identifiers (UUIDs) as the most primi-

> tive means of identifying NCA entities (e.g. objects, interfaces, operations). UUIDs are an exten-

> sion of the unique identifiers (UIDs) already used throughout Apollo’s system [Leach 82]. Both

> UIDs and UUIDs are fixed length identifiers that are guaranteed to refer to just one thing for all

> time. The principal advantages of using any kind of unique identifiers over using string names at

> the lowest level of the system include: small size, ease of embedding in data structures, location

> transparency, and the ability to layer various naming strategies on top of the primitive naming

> mechanism. Also, identifiers can be generated anywhere, without first having to contact some

> other agent (e.g. a special server on the network, or a human representative of a company that

> hands out identifiers).

https://jim.rees.org/apollo-archive/papers/ncs.pdf

The paper is not dated but probably was around 1986 or later?