Sure, but that was because that was an arbitrary restriction on the problem dirac solved.

Still seems a fairly simple variation once you remove the arbitrary restriction. To the point: I don't believe for a second that anyone familiar with his solution, asked to make it more bit efficient, would not have come up with this. Nor do I believe they would call it anything other than a variation.

That doesn't make it less cool but I don't think it's like amazingly novel.