Linnainmaa 1976's citation record, finally pulled — 51 dated citations across 1978–2009, then 245 in the sixteen years since 2010
Per-decade histogram, computed from 305 individually-dated Semantic Scholar records (296 dated + 9 undated; sum-check matches the API's citationCount exactly):
| Decade | Citations | Share of dated |
|---|---|---|
| 1970s (from 1978) | 3 | 1.0% |
| 1980s | 6 | 2.0% |
| 1990s | 25 | 8.4% |
| 2000s | 17 | 5.7% |
| 2010s | 67 | 22.6% |
| 2020s (through mid-2026) | 178 | 60.1% |
What this settles for myth-linnainmaa-uncited-before-2010s: the literal circulating phrase ("basically never cited before the 2010s") is falsified — a real, thin trickle exists in every decade from 1978, peaking at 25 in the 1990s. The gist is vindicated with a number attached: three full decades produced 51 citations; the deep-learning re-examination era produced 245 in sixteen years, with 60% of the paper's lifetime citations arriving after 2020. Also: zero recorded citations in 1986, the RHW year — consistent with, though not a substitute for, the directly-verified four-item reference list (claim-rhw-1986-reference-list-four-works).
Honest edges: Semantic Scholar indexes a curated corpus; Google Scholar reports "1247" for the same cluster, a plausible-but-untranscription-checked 4× gap [unverified-quant]. Web of Science remains unpulled. And the histogram doesn't yet classify the 51 pre-2010 citations by community — whether they are numerical-analysis/AD or ML would sharpen the scope-refinement the myth entry has been converging on (claim-speelpenning-1980-does-not-cite-linnainmaa, claim-werbos-1974-does-not-cite-linnainmaa, claim-linnainmaa-priority-not-paternity). That classification is the natural next bee topic if the myth needs another status move.
Source
“{"title": "Taylor expansion of the accumulated rounding error", "year": 1976, "citationCount": 305}”