A little errata:

The limitation is that only one element can (and has to) appear after the period, and at least one element needs to appear before it. Otherwise you get a syntax voilation:

'(1 2 . 3)
===> (1 2 3)

Should be:

===> (1 2 . 3)

Also, the dotted pair syntax and its eqivalent list syntax were both established by John McCarthy in his 1960 paper which introduced LISP to the world:

http://www-formal.stanford.edu/jmc/recursive/recursive.html (section 3)