History:

-1992 The Cypherpunks create an anonymous mailer for like-minded users to share ideas.(Eric Hughes, Tim May, Hal Finney, Wei Dai, Nick Szabo, Adam Back, Ray Dillenger, etc….)
https://www.cypherpunks.to/faq/cyphernomicron/cyphernomicon.txt
http://cypherpunks.venona.com/date/1993/10/msg00759.html

-1995 Tim May posts a call to the Cypherpunks to create a decentralised electronic currency.
http://cypherpunks.venona.com/date/1995/09/msg00964.html

-1995 Nick Szabo answers Tim’s call(He also has smart contracts to include once it gets going)
http://cypherpunks.venona.com/date/1995/09/msg01303.html

1996 Wei Dai PipeNet 1.1
http://www.weidai.com/pipenet.txt

-1997 Tim Mays Anonymous Digital Cash paper.
http://osaka.law.miami.edu/~froomkin/articles/tcmay.htm

1997 Adam Backs “Hashash”
http://www.hashcash.org/

- 1998 Wei Dai elaborates on Tim’s idea for a digital currency and called it “Bmoney”.(It reads like the beginning idea of BitGold/Bitcoin)
http://www.weidai.com/bmoney.txt

-1998 Szabo had a simular more detailed idea “BitGold” soon after Dai’s paper and he worked relentlessly on making that idea work.
http://szabo.best.vwh.net/intrapoly.html
http://cypherpunks.venona.com/date/1995/09/msg00988.htmle

-1999 Szabo mentions bitgold and talk of a special “ASIC” type chip that could be used for mining.
http://szabo.best.vwh.net/intrapoly.html

-2001 Tim May explains a system like BitGold/Bitcoin would have to be released anonymous:
https://www.mail-archive.com/cypherpunks@lne.com/msg00080.html

- 2004 Hal Finney’s “RPOW” was the missing piece of the puzzle. “RPOW” was added on top of Adam Back’s “HashCash”. (The solution for the Byzantine General’s Problem which allows BitGold/Bitcoin to be completed)
http://cryptome.org/rpow.htm

-2004 Wei Dai’s c++ library
http://www.cryptopp.com/

-2005 Nick Szabo publishes BitGold paper.
http://unenumerated.blogspot.com/2005/12/bit-gold.html?m=1

2007 Szabo Blogging about two ideas. BitGold and Scarce Objects(finite supply like Bitcoin)
Note: These two ideas put together is Bitcoin.
http://web.archive.org/web/20070625154046/http://unenumerated.blogspot.com/
http://web.archive.org/web/20070618142414/http://szabo.best.vwh.net/scarce.html

2007 Satoshi (at a later date) says he started putting Bitcoin together.
http://m.benzinga.com/article/3563567

-2008 Szabo calls out to the cypherpunk types for help to finalize coding BitGold and run a test net a few months before the white paper gets published online.
*Szabo’s post for assistance:
“Bitgold would greatly benefit from a demonstration, an experimental market (with e.g. a trusted third party substituted for the complex security that would be needed for a real system). Anybody want to help me code one up?”
https://likeinamirror.wordpress.com/2013/12/

-Satoshi Nakamoto appears out of thin air and introduces Bitcoin right in the middle of the economic crisis that was saturated in the news at that time and then disappears.

*“Szabo has extensively studied British history for his legal and monetary theories (it’s hard to miss this if you’ve read his essays), so I do not regard the Britishisms as a point against Szabo”. ~ gwern

*Ray Dillenger (Bear) quote: “Look, (Satoshi) was a construction made explicitly for the purpose of launching Bitcoin……That purpose is fulfilled.  The person who created (Satoshi) has no further need for him.  Thus ends the story”.

*Hal Finney quote: “How do you find someone who has spent a lifetime covering his tracks?…For some, he was a guardian angel. others, a ghost, who never quite fit in…What’s the S stand for?”