Criswell predicts this thread will get three replies, at maximum.
Anyway, earlier this evening, as part of one of my arcane hobbies, I exported and retextured a 3D model from my old copy of Myth: The Fallen Lords. A classic RTS made by Bungie Software…in 1997.
It just occurs to me that this 11 year old model might be the oldest thing I have that I can still edit with a modern 3D modeling program.
But I can’t help but wonder—can/has anyone here beat that?
No, but Quake was released in 1996.
I just launched my 1996 copy of Specular’s Infini-D (rendering and animation app) under Mac OS Classic. The oldest model I saved is dated October 1996, and is a reverse explosion of the letters in the word “Welcome” with all of the letters being made of glass (so I could see refraction effects) that changed from clear to light blue over the course of three seconds. I remember how long it would take to do animation renderings – I’d leave it running overnight (on my 100 MHz Powerbook). Now it’s doing 3-4 frames per minute on my 2 GHz machine.
I’m impressed that the app still runs!
Why would anyone want access to such a primitive model? Surely it would have barely 30 faces on it.
What about the old wireframe objects in Elite? I guess they probably only existed as an array in the EXE though.
Descent, 1995. People still even build levels for it.
My original installation media crapped out in 2002. 
Great game!