title: Who should be credited for VLQ and zig-zag encoding?
body: <p>I have designed a (rather simple) network protocol which relies heavily on <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Variable-length_quantity" rel="nofollow noreferrer">VLQ-coded integers</a> and <a href="https://en.wikibooks.org/wiki/Data_Compression/Coding#ZigZag_encoding" rel="nofollow noreferrer">zig-zag coding</a> (as described by the <a href="https://developers.google.com/protocol-buffers/docs/encoding" rel="nofollow noreferrer">Protobuf</a>). I learned about these techniques on the Internet and they felt quite obvious to me. However, now I want to compose an Internet-Draft describing my protocol, and it seems ridiculous to reference Wikipedia articles in a normative document.</p>
  
  <p>Does somebody know a well-recognized publication, describing VLQ and zig-zag coding? Who is their original inventor?</p>