Earlier Conceptions
Dragons are already present in The Book of Lost Tales, the earliest Middle-earth-related narratives written by Tolkien, starting in 1917. The Book of Lost Tales was eventually posthumously published in two volumes as part of The History of Middle-earth series, which was edited and includes commentary by his son Christopher.
In the earliest drafts of "The Fall of Gondolin", the Lost Tale that is the basis for The Silmarillion, Morgoth (here called Melkor) sends mechanical war machines in the form of dragons against the city; some even serve as armoured personnel carriers for Orcs. These machines do not appear in the published Silmarillion, also edited by Christopher Tolkien, in which real dragons attack the city. As in the later conception of the dragons in the Legendarium, the winged dragons had not yet been devised by Morgoth at the time of the Fall of Gondolin. The first winged dragons were coeval with Ancalagon the Black.
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