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suggests it's a low-dimension version of "corner case", which I believe comes from aerospace*. (both spike in 1947-1957, which, albeit possible, seems early for a software origin)

* compare "coffin corner": https://books.google.com/ngrams/graph?content=corner+case%2C...

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When I previously looked into the examples returned, most were accidental connections across a sentence boundary in scientific papers e.g. "Case 1 - both poles on the edge. Case 2 - ..."

The ones that related to aerospace seemed to refer to leading edge and trailing edge which doesn't seem to fit the modern meaning?

I saw several corner cases related to civil engineering in the correct sense; I'll try to think of larger phrases that might be more specific...

EDIT: or maybe not? they seem to be literally "edge" and "corner" cases (of slabs, not in parameter space)

(...and "coffin corner" appears to have been from american football before aerospace?)

Yep, I'm struggling to find a use outside of computer science where I'm starting to suspect it originated

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