No, the fingertip grip was around long before resin and urethane balls.
here's from Don Carters book (10 secrets of bowling) back in 1963:
As you can see he's doing fingertip and also he's doing the pinky tuck!
Back in the day a lot were doing semi-fingertip also.
Here's a patent application from 1949 showing a fingertip grip also:
http://patentimages.storage.googleap...S2616695-0.png
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