When did mathematical queueing theory start?
Agner Krarup Erlang (ref. An Introduction to Queueing Theory, by Kashyap and Chaudhry, 1988, p. 1) published his first paper on the subject in 1909 (according to Cooper, Introduction to Queueing Theory (Second Edition), 1981). Erlang was an Danish engineer who worked for the Copenhagen Telephone Exchange. Although Erlang was preceded slightly by work of Johannsen (1907), Erlang is still considered the father of mathematical queueing theory. A good summary of the history of queueing theory up to 1961 can be found in Saaty’s Elements of Queueing Theory, 1961, pp. 20-25. Also see Syski’s article in the book Frontiers in Queueing (1997).
