If the synthesized molecules of a combinatorial library are cleaved from the solid support a soluble mixture forms. In such solution, millions of different compounds may be found. When this synthetic method was developed, it first seemed impossible to identify the molecules, and to find molecules with useful properties. Strategies for identification of the useful components had been developed, however, to solve the problem. All these strategies are based on synthesis and testing of partial libraries. 
The earliest iterative strategy is described in the above-mentioned document of Furka notarized in 1982 and. The method was later independently published by Erb et al. under the name "Recursive deconvolution"