Point-&-Figure-Charts date back to the 19th century. The earliest records appear with Charles Dow and his contemporaries on Wall Street, who at the time recorded price movements in columns of "X" and "O" on graph paper — without dates, without a time axis, just price.
Later, Victor De Villiers (1933) and A.W. Cohen (1947) systematized the method. Tom Dorsey spread it internationally from the 1990s onward, primarily through his work with Bullish Percent Indices. Today P&F is a niche instrument — but precisely because so few know it, it generates signals that are difficult to see in candlestick charts.