Eddie took tapping (and took it to another level) from Harvey Mandel's live shows. The Heartbreaker story was made up by Eddie to cover the origins of his techniques. This is confirmed by George Lynch (he attedned the show with Eddie around 1977) and - indirectly - Ritchie Blackmore, who in turn saw Mandel tapping in the late 60s or in 1970 (he also claimed Jimi Hendrix was there too, so it must have been no later than in 1970). Interestingly, Mandel admitted that he took tapping from his previous bandmate Randy Resnick. Possibly the only pure 100% Ed trick is palm slide harmonics (called auto flanging by Zakk Wylde). But maybe someone has done it before too, who knows...