The thread below is the only mention of the people first responsible for the traverse. This is credited as Tita Piaz and Hans Dülfer (although due to the lack of quantity of information there may have been others involved).
Of note is this translation of the wikipedia article on Tita Piaz:
It is also popular with climbers for
inventing the technique of
rappelling . Today his technique,
which went into disuse with the advent
of harnesses and modern belay devices
, is known simply as "Piaz method" or
"Dulfer-Piaz" (also the mountaineer
Hans Dulfer is considered the inventor
of this technique).
And this one from the Hans Dülfer wikipedia page:
In addition to success in climbing,
layback was very important for the
technical innovations introduced. The
best known are the techniques of
abseiling that still bears his name,
Dülfersitz, 3 and the technique for
ascending layback cracks in the rock.
Also of note is this mention in Pilgrims of the Vertical:
...and by 1900 Hans Dülfer, Otto
Herzog, and Hans Fiechtl had refined
and systematized aid climbing. They
forged harder pitons for the thinner
cracks, steel snap-links (carabiners)
to connect pitons to the rope, and
rope ladders (etriers) to attach to
pitons. but the values inscribed in
their climbs and writings had already
reshaped the sport.They also created
new techniques such as a body belay to
hold falls, a way to wrap the rope
around a body and rap- pel downward,
and a method of penduluming.
Thread: History of the Tyrolean Traverse:
Piaz and Duelfer were contemporaries--
Piaz claims to have done the first,
but I doubt that we could definitively
credit one or the other at this point.
There's no doubt that it was part of
the technical innovation to come out
of the Dolomites and the Kaisergebrige
in the Tirolian Alps. Pitons,
rappelling, tension traverses, aid
climbing, stirrups, pendulums, and the
Tirolian traverse were all developed
by Bavarian, Tirolian and South
Tirolian climbers in the late 19th and
early 20th century.
http://ezra.cornell.edu/posting.php?timestamp=1302159600
“‘Tyro’ is short for Tyrolean
Traverse, a climbing system using
ropes to horizontally cross a barrier
such as a raging river, a crevasse,
or, in this case, one of Cornell’s
famous gorges. It was first developed
by climbers in the eastern Alps of
Austria/Italy, in a region called
Tirol. Think of it as a practical zip
line, where the goal is not to go
fast, but to simply to cross an
otherwise impassible barrier.”
History of the zipline:
There's no doubt that it was part of
the technical innovation to come out
of the Dolomites and the Kaisergebrige
in the Tirolian Alps. Pitons,
rappelling, tension traverses, aid
climbing, stirrups, pendulums, and the
Tirolian traverse were all developed
by Bavarian, Tirolian and South
Tirolian climbers in the late 19th and
early 20th century.
