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General:
It is almost a permanent need in researching progress addressing/referring the first inventor, proposer or developer of the concepts which are widely being used these days. Have got no clear idea how to manage these needs but relying on the personal knowledge and sometime Wiki helps. But this does not work all the time, unfortunately as it is needed.

Particular Qs:
Generally what resources would you use to find a proper reference to the first literature?

I realized sometime that authors are referring to papers just to avoid plagiarism while not taking care if the claim is really correct, saying for example: "the first paper appeared in ..." while for the same concept another author refers to some one else.

So, how do you find the real first inventor of a concept ultimately and in the field?

more Qs:
the first inventors/proposer/developers of the following topics in Statistics:

  • stochastic theory/modeling/{feel free to add...}
  • point processes/marks...
  • spatial modeling...

I think the review and survey papers may help if we could trust what we see in them, what else?

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2  
Why does it matter? Quite often the original concept isn't well presented at first, and is open to critique. Later papers will address critiques, and build on earlier work. Isn't it more important to reference a well written paper that described the concept comprehensively and concisely, than to try to find the original? Science isn't a static field.. – naught101 Apr 20 '12 at 0:38
@naught101 Agree with you in some extent saying that it is not a nightmare to me but a passion to give people the credit for their contributions. If we say that "there are examples as see this, that..." it is OK but when we state that "the original idea proposed by ..." I think this case requires care. In statistics due to its huge extent this situation becomes a problem for each publication in progress tackling respecting fellow researchers. Your point however in terms of the development in the original idea is completely correct. – Developer Apr 20 '12 at 2:21
One more thing that as I said it is possible sometime to find the answer via web search but that is not guaranteed getting the right answer as it is required for scientific publication; you know what I mean. I believe that the knowledge of the community of researchers as I guess many, for example, contribute in this site cloud be very helpful. I think of it as the cloud of knowledge including each person's experiences. So I chose to submit this here. – Developer Apr 20 '12 at 2:44
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Fair enough, but be wary of conflating original papers with original ideas. Many ideas are actually invented by people who don't go anywhere near academia, and it may be the case that the original, canonical paper doesn't give credit where credit is due. Clifford Connor's "A People's History of Science" does an excellent job of righting some of the mis-attribution of core scientific concepts over the last millenia (usually to scholarly elite, instead of the lower classes who originated the ideas). – naught101 Apr 20 '12 at 3:30
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The first part is rather a topic for Academia.SE and the second should be rather a standalone Community Wiki Q; can you please consider editing it? – mbq♦ Apr 20 '12 at 13:05
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