Yes, Barnes started the present trend in the late 1980s, and I have used them since then, including coping with the difficulties of the early models. In my experience they started really getting the problems solved about a decade later, but the introduction of the TSX in 2004 really got Barnes over the hump.
But Barnes did not invent monolithic bullets. Others had experimented with them long before, as well as nearly monolithic bullets, such as the now defunct North Fork, which only had a tiny bit of lead in the tip. And other companies came at it from a different direction.
Nosler brought out the E-Tip in 2007, essentially as a coreless Ballistic Tip since they'd experimented considerably with various core/jacket ratios already. The E-Tips worked well from the beginning (I know this due to extensively testing E-Tips on big game before they were offered to customers) but a small percentage of rifles didn't shoot them well, perhaps because of "disagreements" between bore diameter and the solid shank.
But not as many people back then were willing to experiment with seating depth--which eventually proved to be a major potential factor with not just Barnes bullets but all monos. I got 130 E-Tips to shoot VERY well in a .270 Weatherby by seating them a LOT deeper than 130 Ballistic tips.
GMX's came out a little later, and from my experience worked well from the beginning--probably due to observing what had happened with other monos, and other solid-shank bullets.
