I've never heard of the original BASIC being compiled in any way, JIT or otherwise. Far as I know, the most it did was tokenize keywords into one or two bytes,

I've never heard of the original BASIC being compiled in any way, JIT or otherwise. Far as I know, the most it did was tokenize keywords into one or two bytes, something every other BASIC interpreter took up as a matter of course. There were dozens and dozens of BASIC compilers available, for all kinds of platforms from Commodore 64's to mainframes. Microsoft BASIC Compiler for IBM: https://archive.org/details/stx_Microsoft_BASIC_Compiler_Fundamentals_version_2.00 https://archive.org/details/stx_Microsoft_BASIC_Compiler_Fun... Convergent BASIC Compiler for the Burroughs B20: https://archive.org/details/bitsavers_convergent0BASICCompilerR4.0Apr85_6378172 https://archive.org/details/bitsavers_convergent0BASICCompil... BASIC compiler for Burroughs mainframes: https://archive.org/details/bitsavers_burroughsS00InternalMemosBook322125280CBASICCompil_890489 https://archive.org/details/bitsavers_burroughsS00InternalMe...