Answer:
The Original Problem 2000(or so) BC
Egyptian, Chinese and Babylonian engineers were actually smart people - they knew how the area of a quadrangle scales with the length of its side. They knew that it's attainable to store nine times more bales of hay if the side of the square loft is tripled. They moreover found out how to calculate the area of more complex designs like rectangles and T-shapes and so on.