"the earliest version" is a valid phrase that can be used in written English.
For example, you could say: "The earliest version of the software was released in 2003."
The earliest version of Kashmir was just Page and drummer John Bonham.
Especially as it commissioned the earliest version of it in the first place.
They tested the earliest version of the game with friends at weekends and soon found a committed audience.
And without the extension, Disney's copyright on the earliest version of Mickey Mouse would have expired next year.
The earliest version of Shakespeare on film is a tiny fragment of King John, starring Sir Herbert Beerbohm Tree.
The earliest version of this work is in a 9th-century ms. called "Book of Armach," in the library of Trinity College, Dublin.
Restorations in France generally aim to go back to the earliest version that can be authenticated through plans, documents or paintings.
Grumman's involvement with the Hawkeye dates from the 1960's, when it built the earliest version of the carrier-based plane.
Interestingly, some of the wicked stepmothers we know so well – Snow White's, for example – were biological mothers in the earliest version.
In combining the Eastern and Western mystical traditions, Erigena created the earliest version of a highly speculative negative mysticism that was later often revived.
Among the better-known, we have Poe's "Berenice", that curious tale of dental monomania; the editor has selected the earliest version of the story, which contains details later suppressed as too gruesome.
