On a historical note I was wondering what the mems community thinks of as the
earliest microactuator?

To avoid confusion I will make this question a bit more specific. I will
qualify my search to those microactuators that are constructed in a
batch-fabrication process which uses photolithographic techniques.

The earliest microactuator reference that I have is to the work done on the
resonant-gate transistor at Westinghouse in the 1960's.

Here is the reference:

H. C. Nathanson and R. A. Wickstrom, `A resonant-gate silicon surface
transistor with high-Q bandpass properties,' Appl. Phys. Lett., vol. 7, pp.
84-86, 1965.

-Jack
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