What was the first scientific article to give a recognisably "modern" citation to another article?

Question

It's easy to find online citation indices; however they typically only cover recent articles, e.g. Scopus has coverage since 2004. Indeed citation indices in paper form seem to have been introduced in the 1950s. It's easy to find papers that cite old texts (e.g. search Google Scholar for "Euclid's Geometries"), but rather than the earliest cited publications, I'm interested in the earliest citing publications.

I've been able to find out about when certain citation styles were introduced: Wikipedia describes Vancouver-style citations as "over a hundred years old" but does not cite a source for that assertion. I also know that there is a long history of scientists corresponding with each other and publishing that correspondence in the journals of their societies.

But when was the citation in its current form - an inline reference, footnote or endnote acknowledging the author, title and publication details of the work being cited - introduced? What is the first citation as it would now be recognised?

Answer 1

The book Brian Z mentions claims the 17th century:

http://www.nytimes.com/books/97/12/07/reviews/971207.07mckittt.html Grafton traces the history of the modern footnote to rather an unlikely quarter -- from Ranke back to David Hume in the 18th century, then to Pierre Bayle and Jean Le Clerc in the late 17th.