following up a message from Roy J. Tellason to Pascal Schmidt:

 RJT> Pascal Schmidt wrote in a message to CHARLES ANGELICH:

 PS> Hi CHARLES! :-)

 RJT>> ^^^^^^^^^ Haven't you run across this before? "There Ain't
 RJT>> No Such Thing As A Free Lunch"... 
 CA> Well no not really, only in your messages. 
 PS> For what it's worth, its origin is Robert Heinlein's "The Moon is a
 PS> Harsh Mistress" SF novel.

 RJT> Actually I think the expression was around long before that, 
 RJT> though it does indeed appear in that book...

In a book I'm currently reading,  this chapter I just got to says,  right
at the beginning:

"Economists like to say that `there ain't no such thing as a free
lunch'.  The expression,  popularized by University of Chicago economist
Milton Friedman but dating back to at least 1949, is shorthand for saying
tha tnothing comes without a price."

Then there's a note attached to that point that says "See William
Safire,  `On Language',  New York Times,  January 23,  1994.  (No idea if
this stuff is available online or not.)

I *knew* it went back further than the Heinlein book...

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