Answering with some decency the first two questions asked by Prabhu Guptara  
would alone require an articulate history of business cycle and crises theories:  
a bit too much for a post to this list. Nevertheless, a sketchy attempt can  
be done.  
  
1) The statistical understanding of business cycles. Most of the authors  
writing on business cycles since the 1890s up to the 1920s had an historical  
or statistical section in their books. The statistical methods were more  
or less refined, but it is worth noting that often titles themselves of the  
books referred to the history of crises/cycles. Just think of Tugan Baranowsky,  
Spiethoff, Aftalion, Bouniatian, Robertson, Pigou, Hawtrey, Mitchell (1913).  
The first full-blown attempt at elaborating business cycle statistics was  
probably Juglar in 1862 (preceded by some statistical articles in the late  
1850s), followed by Jevons. Histories of crises (in the plural) were already  
published in the 1850s.  
  
2) The second question, "whoever did the first identification, and whenever  
that was, when exactly did business cycles first start affecting industrial  
society?" simply cannot be answered as it is formulated, due to the changing  
nature of the "cycle" itself, and of the economists' (or writers on the subject:  
which in the XIX century was certainly not the same thing) ways of understanding  
what crises/cycles are. Some periodicity in the recurring of crises was noted  
(some say it was common place) by the end of the 1820s. By the early 1830s  
we have the first attempts to explain endogenously (or semi-endogenously)  
the recurrence of these events: mostly in terms of the repetition of crises  
(with emphasis on the most dramatic part of the cycle), occasionally directly  
in terms of cycles. The family of explanations in terms of recurring crises  
gave way to purely cyclical explanation just before WWI. A passage by Mitchell  
(a rethorical masterpiece) records the change of the intellectual climate:  
  
"Wide divergences of opinion continue to exist among competent writers upon  
crises; but in recent years substantial agreement has been reached upon two  
points of fundamental importance.  
        Crises are no longer treated as sudden catastrophes which interrupt the  
?normal? course of business, as episodes which can be understood without  
investigation of the intervening years. On the contrary, the crisis is regarded  
as but the most dramatic and briefest of the three phases of a business cycle  
?prosperity, crisis, and depression. Modern discussion endeavor to show why  
a crisis is followed by a depression, and depression by prosperity, quite  
as much as to show why prosperity is followed by a crisis. In a word, the  
theory of crises has grown into the theory of business cycles.  
        The wider grasp of the problem has discredited the view that crises are  
due to abnormal conditions which tempt industry and trade to forsake their  
beaten paths and temporarily befog the judgement of business men and investors,  
or to misguided legislation, unsound business practices, imperfect banking  
organization, and the like. As business cycles have continued to run their  
round decade after decade in all nations of highly developed business organization,  
the idea that each crisis may be accounted for by some special cause has  
become less tenable. On the contrary, the explanations in favor today ascribe  
the recurrence of crises after periods of prosperity to some inherent characteristic  
of economic organization or activity. The complex processes which make up  
business life are analyzed to discover why they inevitably work out a change  
from good times to bad and from bad times to good. The influence of special  
conditions is admitted, of course, but rather as a factor which complicates  
the process than as the leading cause of crises" (Mitchell 1913, pp. 5?6).  
  
Back to the question. When cycles started to effect industrial societies  
depends on what one means by 'cycles'. If we take Mitchell seriously, that  
the phenomenon he and his contemporaries were classifying as 'cycles' was  
the same phenomenon earlier writers called 'crises', or recurring crises,  
then one can say that crises affected industrial societies at least early  
enough to permit to people at the end of the 1820s to recognise such events  
as somehow periodical. The literature records ample discussions (professional,  
and in the press and by means of pamphlets, financial journals, etc.) after  
each crisis, emphasising the distress caused by each of these events. So  
that story goes back at least 180 years.  
  
Daniele Besomi