Gumball origins

A question out of curiosity. What are the origins of the Gumball concept? Was something similar previously used in other 3D modeling software? Again, not a complaint, just curious.

Gumball first showed up in Rhino with T-Splines.

I’ve seen the gumball concept in other CAD software going back more that 10 years. I think the closest example would be the “tri-ball” (I think that’s what they called it) in IronCad. Rhino’s gumball is not the first of it’s kind.