There are scholars of slang who hunt for earliest documentable uses. Does anyone do the same for puns?
In 1971, Larry Niven and David Gerrold published a novel The Flying Sorcerors. Recently for the first time I found that pun made circa 1959 (but I’ve forgotten the context). And just now I heard an even earlier one: in “Broom-Stick Bunny”, 1956, Bugs says, “You’re not gonna believe this: I just saw a genie with light brown hair chasing a flying sorceress.”
A Tom & Jerry cartoon entitled “The Flying Sorceress” appeared four weeks before “Broom-Stick Bunny”.
My favorite use of language from that book was the translating machine giving a man’s name as “As a shade of purple gray” (Asimov)