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Babbage's analytical engine used a form of microcode ~100 years earlier. Complex operations such as multiplication and division were implemented by lower-level instructions encoded as a series of pegs on a rotating barrel. Each micro-instruction ("vertical" in Babbage's terminology) could take several seconds to execute so a complete multiplication or division would take minutes.

You mean the 8086, not the 8-bit 8080, right? The 8080 wasn't microcoded.

Indeed, that was a typo. Fixed now. Thanks.

Thanks for that link! The concept of "Directly Executable High Level Language" is also kind of fascinating— seems almost like an early pitch for something like a native LISP or Java machine.