I don't know why parent comment is stirring up drama but:
1. Not available online doesn't mean the paper's existence is made up. It's a very bold claim to make for the authors that they cite work that is fabricated.
From the available information, this looks like a technical report by a, probably now defunct, company back in the 80s. If this was its only form of publication, and not on some conference proceedings for example, it would be only found available on select university libraries as a physical copy. But most important,
2. This isn't even as an impactful paper as the parent comment states. Or if its proposed concept is, the original idea is probably derived from some other paper that is indeed the one that is highly cited and most definitely available online.
Accumulative citations number from Google Scholar and IEEEXplore doesn't exceed fifteen for the particular paper though.
Not available online doesn't mean the paper's existence is made up.
True, but note that the post you're referring to does say:
I've emailed dozens of academics, libraries, and archives - none of them have a copy.
So this isn't somebody just saying "I couldn't find it with Google, therefore it doesn't exist."
From the available information, this looks like a technical report by a, probably now defunct, company back in the 80s.
Yeah, I think that's the key point. An internal technical memo from a private company, from that far back, isn't likely to be easy to find. It's quite possible that it's never been digitized and put on the 'net, and it it wasn't published in a journal, it may never have been archived by any university libraries or such-like.
That said, I'd be a little surprised if a copy didn't turn up somewhere, even if it means a former employee of CCA finding a copy in a desk drawer and providing it. But who knows?
