RLE on runs of deltas is in very many compression schemes; it's a common technique (probably so common that many authors don't deem it worth mentioning). Lossless video codecs in particular (huffyuv, lagarith, utcodec, etc.) have had this going back 20 years at least.
we applied rle encoding for time-series and triac control systems 43 years ago after getting some guidance from a mainframe guy - but since RLE is practical so that we even use it to give direction to people on the street, its probably so old that its even found its way into the way our genes are encoded. :D
