I purchased Wilder's (J. Welles Wilder, Jr.) book, "New Concepts in Technical Trading", in 1979 (I believe it was '79).
It wasn't that pricey, about what most trading books ran at that time.
HIs real claim to fame was developing RSI.
Hard to find a technician (commodities or stocks) wherein they don't reference that indicator.
The book was written specifically for commodity futures trading. However, it didn't take too long before the stock jocks picked it up.
Heck, I remember that in the early eighties, only commodity publications utilized/referenced it. The chart service "Commodity Perspective" comes to mind.