The image above is from the Jack Kilby patent for "Miniaturized Electronic Circuits" and the multibrator oscillator publicized in the 7-August  1959 issue of Electronics .  See the issue at World Radio History here .

Multivibrator oscillators were invented during the first World War, in the early days of triode vacuum tubes.

The first set of slides below focus on design using bipolar junction transistors.

The second set contains examples with vacuum tube triodes and junction FETs.

The multivibrator topology today is commonly referred to as a cross-coupled (transistor) pair.

Dr. Behzad Razavi has an interesting 3-part paper on the Cross-Coupled Pair.  In Part-3, he mentions the historical development of oscillators from the RC multivibrator, to the cathode/emitter/source-coupled RC oscillator, to the  similarly coupled LC oscillator.

The papers,  originally in 2014-2015 issues of IEEE Solid-State Circuits Magazine, are available at Dr. Razavi's web page as linked below: https://www.seas.ucla.edu/brweb/papers/Journals/BR_Magzine1.pdf 

https://www.seas.ucla.edu/brweb/papers/Journals/BR_Magzine2.pdf 

https://www.seas.ucla.edu/brweb/papers/Journals/BR_Magzine3.pdf