I’m not at all sure, but poking around on Wikipedia suggests that the idea of bytecode interpreters might have dated to roughly the same time as MUMPS, which me

I’m not at all sure, but poking around on Wikipedia suggests that the idea of bytecode interpreters might have dated to roughly the same time as MUMPS, which means it wouldn’t have necessarily been the obvious choice at that time. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/P-code_machine https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/P-code_machine