The story Ernie always related to his audience was this. When on a vacation in Arizona with his family he observed farmers planting cotton on "beds". He came home with the idea that corn and soybeans in the midwest could also be planted on "beds". This was in the early 60s.

Ernie, of course didn't "invent" till-planting (ridge till), but he was probably the most enthusastic practitioner of the system that I have ever known.

I don't know when TX farmers started planting on beds. Ernie was born in 1916.