"Gauge symmetry: Whenever the Hamiltonian is such as to conserve the total number of particles of a particular sort—or, more generally, where there is a conserved "charge"-like quantity, such as lepton or baryon number, or electric charge itself—we shall find that the Hamiltonian will exhibit a gauge invariance property."
January 1, 1970
https://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/Hamiltonian_(quantum_mechanics)