If anyone can give me the history of compile-time VMs as compilers, i'd be interested. It's the obvious solution to making static langs as usable as dynamic, bu

If anyone can give me the history of compile-time VMs as compilers, i'd be interested. It's the obvious solution to making static langs as usable as dynamic, but seems to have exploded in lang-design popularity over the last decade. Who was the first to do it? Why? What did they inspire? I take it Jonathan Blow has been a significant inspiration, but there's clearly prior art to this approach.