The Original Fireball came from Leonard Patt in 1970 - Another History of D&D Fireball Article

Fireball the spell was invented in 1970 it would seem! So Chainmail borrowed from this unnamed rule system in 1970 by Leonard Patt, while he was a junior in college in the New England area. Thankfully Chainmail did this, or it may have been lost forever. 

From MtGathering I think.

D&D Arcade game.

https://dumpstatadventures.com/blog/deep-dive-fireball-spell

Quote: The history of the Fireball in tabletop gaming reaches back to 1970 when the first incarnation can be found in a war game created by Leonard Patt (a good, albeit quick, background on Patt’s Fireball can be found here). We aren’t going to get into the debate about how Gygax stole the Fireball and many, many other things from Patt’s game.

https://playingattheworld.blogspot.com/2016/01/a-precursor-to-chainmail-fantasy.html

Quote: Chainmail itself drew on a two-page set of rules developed for a late 1970 game run by the New England Wargamers Association (NEWA), which were designed by one Leonard Patt. Patt’s system shows us the first fantasy game with heroes, dragons, orcs, ents, and wizards who cast fireballs at enemies, though his contribution today goes entirely unacknowledged. The picture above shows this system in play at a Miniature Figure Collectors of America convention in October 1970 representing the Battle of the Pelennor Fields, a demonstration that won a “Best in Show” award.

https://playingattheworld.blogspot.com/2016/02/a-conversation-with-len-patt.html

Quote:  

Patt was a junior at Northeastern University in Boston, studying chemistry, when he wrote these fantasy rules. He grew up just south of Boston in nearby Weymouth, and fell in with the New England Wargamers Association while in college. Previously, in high school, he remembers playing Risk and Stratego, but not much more by way of wargames. He has since gone on to a career in chemistry, having left wargames behind in his college days.

So how did he feel, when he learned of the recent news that his fantasy wargame rules had helped inspire Chainmail and thus Dungeons & Dragons?

“I was just amazed, I had totally forgotten that I had done it," Patt replies. "Those memory cells had been completed wiped out by advanced organic chemistry.” When it comes to the Courier, the paper containing the fantasy rules, Patt admits, “I had completely forgotten even about that little journal.” He thinks it unlikely that he attended the Philadelphia MFCA convention personally where the game was played in 1970, given his responsibilities at school.

Wargaming may not have been his true calling. A 1969 issue of the Courier announced a tongue-in-cheek  "Lenny Patt Award" to be bestowed twice yearly to a NEWA member "who consistently shows much tactical ability and knowledge of rules while never winning."

Commenter says: "NEWA Ancients ruleset they were using".