As the others point out, there is no knowing about the earliest this was written down. For example, the notion of regularity of a ternary form is due to Dickson, but universality is an easier concept and could have gone without any name for quite some time.

Worth pointing out that all universal ternaries can be described. Three out of four types are in Dickson's 1939 book; the one type with odd "mixed" coefficients was proved by A. Oppenheim in 1930. Alexander Oppenheim was a student of Dickson and got his Ph.D. in 1930. The dissertation was titled The Minima of Indefinite Quaternary Quadratic Forms

http://www.numbertheory.org/obituaries/OTHERS/oppenheim.html

I am having trouble finding this: Quarterly Journal of Mathematics (1930) 179-185. Evidently this is where Oppenheim published a few items. His obituary goes back as far as 1941 ..

The following are representative forms under the action of $SL_3 \mathbb Z$ as follows: given the Hessian matrix $H$ of a quadratic form, a new representative is $P^T H P.$

Taking $N$ odd, while $M$ is any integer, we have universal $$ xy-Mz^2 $$ $$ 2xy - N z^2 $$ $$ 2xy + y^2 - N z^2 $$ $$ 2xy + y^2 - 2N z^2 $$

As the others point out, there is no knowing about the earliest this was written down. For example, the notion of regularity of a ternary form is due to Dickson, but universality is an easier concept and could have gone without any name for quite some time.

Worth pointing out that all universal ternaries can be described. Three out of four types are in Dickson's 1939 book, page 161 in Modern Elementary Theory of Numbers; the one type with odd "mixed" coefficients was proved by A. Oppenheim in 1930. Sir Alexander Oppenheim was a student of Dickson and got his Ph.D. in 1930. The dissertation was titled The Minima of Indefinite Quaternary Quadratic Forms

http://www.numbertheory.org/obituaries/OTHERS/oppenheim.html

I am having trouble finding this: Quarterly Journal of Mathematics (1930) 179-185. Evidently this is where Oppenheim published a few items. His obituary goes back as far as 1941 ..

The following are representative forms under the action of $SL_3 \mathbb Z$ as follows: given the Hessian matrix $H$ of a quadratic form, a new representative is $P^T H P.$

Taking $N$ odd, while $M$ is any integer, we have universal $$ xy-Mz^2 $$ $$ 2xy - N z^2 $$ $$ 2xy + y^2 - N z^2 $$ $$ 2xy + y^2 - 2N z^2 $$

As the others point out, there is no knowing about the earliest this was written down. For example, the notion of regularity of a ternary form is due to Dickson, but universality is an easier concept and could have gone without any name for quite some time.

Worth pointing out that all universal ternaries can be described. Three out of four types are in Dickson's 1939 book; the one type with odd "mixed" coefficients was proved by A. Oppenheim in 1930.

The following are representative forms under the action of $SL_3 \mathbb Z$ as follows: given the Hessian matrix $H$ of a quadratic form, a new representative is $P^T H P.$

Taking $N$ odd, while $M$ is any integer, we have universal $$ xy-Mz^2 $$ $$ 2xy - N z^2 $$ $$ 2xy + y^2 - N z^2 $$ $$ 2xy + y^2 - 2N z^2 $$

As the others point out, there is no knowing about the earliest this was written down. For example, the notion of regularity of a ternary form is due to Dickson, but universality is an easier concept and could have gone without any name for quite some time.

Worth pointing out that all universal ternaries can be described. Three out of four types are in Dickson's 1939 book; the one type with odd "mixed" coefficients was proved by A. Oppenheim in 1930. Alexander Oppenheim was a student of Dickson and got his Ph.D. in 1930. The dissertation was titled The Minima of Indefinite Quaternary Quadratic Forms

http://www.numbertheory.org/obituaries/OTHERS/oppenheim.html

I am having trouble finding this: Quarterly Journal of Mathematics (1930) 179-185. Evidently this is where Oppenheim published a few items. His obituary goes back as far as 1941 ..

The following are representative forms under the action of $SL_3 \mathbb Z$ as follows: given the Hessian matrix $H$ of a quadratic form, a new representative is $P^T H P.$

Taking $N$ odd, while $M$ is any integer, we have universal $$ xy-Mz^2 $$ $$ 2xy - N z^2 $$ $$ 2xy + y^2 - N z^2 $$ $$ 2xy + y^2 - 2N z^2 $$