As to the initial formulas for daily pivots and support/resistance levels, I have vague recollections of old time commodity traders saying they existed as early as the 1970's. But, they could have existed long before and originated in other markets (perhaps even as a footnote in the Buttonwood Agreement).

The idea was apparently scaled up to multiple time frames, including weekly and monthly, by none other than John Person himself (whose book you often cite, Billy) along with some other CBOT traders in 1984. From his website:

Before going any further let me further explain who uses the pivot point numbers, mainly floor traders, hedge funds, prop traders and large speculators all use them. However, the popularity is growing as investors quest for education increases. I picked up on the method back in 1984 as a colleague was showing me how to day trade the foreign currencies, namely the Swiss Franc and the German Deutsche Mark. This was way before forex was popular. In fact trading currencies at the CME has been around since the 1970's. Pivot Point analysis and using a pivot point calculator worked fairly well in those days so I incorporated it for the market I had a passion for, which was Bonds. After using them for some time as a “crutch” I was losing interest as a day trader. I experimented with them using this concept of a longer time period namely on a weekly basis. Wow what a discovery! Then I came to the conclusion to try to use them on a Monthly basis after all I was a believer in Daily, Weekly and Monthly Charts. In fact the Chicago Board Of Trade use to give out a monthly Bond Chart and another friend of mine on the floor use to get together with me for “homework” sessions. We would do longer term chart studies using Moving Averages. I figured why not look at the monthly pivot point price targets too. WOW again! I discovered that I could look at a potential price range target in the future based on price action in the past. The longer the time frames the more power or market move would happen.
A more candid and colorful description of these after-market "homework" sessions is here, in which Person is not afraid to give Heineken its due credit.

From there, it's conceivable that the NASDAQ, perhaps with other exchanges, created the more formal system you were taught, with weightings and even higher time frames.