Interesting .. I trust you, but I had thought ( famously) you folks had required a LISP and/or Scheme in the required "intro to computers" course using the Gerald Sussman and Hal Abelson "Structure of Computer Programs" [Scheme IIRC] until it was finally replaced a few years ago with a Python based one [I thought it was tjt that told me that, but I could easily have been misled/misunderstood].

I think that wasn't until 1981. I took 6.912, which was an experimental pre-cursor to the SICP class as a sophomore. We did LISP programming on Multics. I might have the years off by one -- it was when "Fear of Music" came out. :) The mainstream intro classes used Algol on a PDP-11 I think? To emphasize Noel's point about the distributed nature, the intro to programming class in the MechE department, 2.10, was Fortran first on punch cards and then interactive when they got a big-ass DEC 20 running Digital software. Amusingly MIT AI got one shortly after, and there was some controversy about leaving TOPS-20 or converting it to ITS; ITS lost.