Bill Tindall, E.Tn.
I suspect that much of what we consider for final edge refinement has been derived from historical metal polishing. I don't regard edge refinement(polishing the bevel) any different technologically than surface polishing a metal part. This assumption, I'll bet, is widespread. So a woodworker sees someone polishing a piece of metal and says, I could do that to "polish" a chisel bevel. And if it worked the rest is history. That's how I got into diamonds, which I found are now widely used for metal specimen preparation and metal polishing instead of historical abrasives.

If you go back in history I suspect you will find the method you found was developed for metal surface polishing.