Even that wasn’t the first time introducing efficiency had the opposite intended effect: the cotton gin was invented to reduce the reliance on slavery, it of course famously had the opposite effect, increasing demand for slavery as cotton became even more profitable.
It wasn’t the first time it happened or noticed, but it’s the first time we know of that someone wrote a paper about it.
The Gutenberg press in the 14th century could have saved a lot of time spent copying books by hand. It did, but also triggered a Cambrian explosion of book publishing.
