whilst the term "bokeh" has been around for at most the past 25 years in our language, the actual term is Boke (I can't write Japanese) and simply means "blur". Blur has always been around in photographer and goes right back to Ansel and his giant box of magic. I guess it came about because blur was a rather large term.
I think that any comparison with current day photography techniques and those of the past is a difficult path to tread. a large percentage of the methods used today, as well as the way in which they are applied was simply not possible with equipment until perhaps 20 years ago and for those that were possible, it was an expensive experiment if it went wrong. the advent of digital photography has removed the expense to a certain extent, as now your expense is the equipment alone, no cost for printing, film, manual post production etc. this has meant that instead of shooting 24 frames then waiting 2 weeks to find out your experiment failed you wait 2 seconds, chimp it and delete it.
One of our outings as a club was to force people to think about the shot instead of just shooting everything. we didn't tell people till they arrived, then we limited them to 24 shots, 1 lens and turn of the screen. it was interesting, as those who had only used digital took a 18-200 or equivalent with them, the older generation (me including) tended towards a fixed focus lens (I love my 50mm). Of the 240 shots (I think it was actual 220) the winners hands down were the older generation with the fixed focus who had developed "an eye" for a good image composition. The younger generation understand composition in terms of a set or rules, "rule of thirds", " diagonal lines", "simplify the scene" but none of them could see it without taking the picture. this whole mindset has slipped in to common place, especially amongst judges, who tout "we want something different" when what they really want is the same but altered.
right, I'm stopping now, it's turning in to a rant. sorry.
Carbon fibre is just corduroy for cars.