@jonsca Thanks for pointing that out. It's well into the wee hours for all of our mods except @JeffFerland. I'll pass it around and get my posse on it.
Chapter II of Merkle's 1979 PhD thesis is titled "One Way Hash Functions." The chapter appears to be the first reference to cryptographic hashing. The chapter has no references. Is there an earlier reference that I am not aware of?