It was introduced by B. S. Tsirelson in 1974. The same year, Figiel and Johnson published a related article () where they used the notation "T" for the "dual" of Tsirelson's example. Today, the letter "T" is the standard notation for the dual of the original example, while the original Tsirelson example is denoted by "T"*. In "T"* or in "T", no subspace is isomorphic, as Banach space, to an "ℓ" "p" space, 1 ≤ "p" < ∞, or to "c"0.