There certainly WERE record and stylus cleaners before the 1980’s. I bought my first Cecil E. Watts Preener and Stylus Cleaner in ’68, as well as that company’s Dust Bug, which was a narrow cylindrical-shaped velvet-covered tube on the end of a clear plastic arm. It was pulled inward at the same rate as the cartridge, keeping the LP dust-free as it played. Watts also made a more sophisticated cleaner named the Parastat.
I then bought the original Discwasher when it was introduced in the early-70’s, followed shortly by the Zerostat. Decca in England was offering their carbon fibre brush back then too. And Keith Monks was making a vacuum record cleaning machine in the mid-70’s, long before Nitty Gritty and VPI introduced theirs in the early-80’s.
Why do some people insist on making statements which do nothing but reveal his/her ignorance of hi-fi history?