Lisp is known to be the first high-level interpreted programming language appearing in 1958.
Quoting from Interpreter (computing):
The first interpreted high-level language was Lisp. Lisp was first implemented in 1958 by Steve Russell on an IBM 704 computer.
But, there are older high-level programming languages, that were interpreted as well such as:
The language was interpreted and ran about 50 times slower than machine code.
The speedcoding system was an interpreter and focused on ease of use at the expense of system resources.
Is it the case that lisp is the first successful high-level interpreted programming language? Why is it particularly that people consider being the first interpreted language?
I suppose the answer depends on the definition of a "high-level programming language". Even though Wikipedia does call Speedcoding such, the description gives no indication that it provided
strong abstraction from the details of the computer.
All it apparently offered were
pseudo-instructions for common mathematical functions: logarithms, exponentiation, and trigonometric operations
which is a far cry from sophisticated language constructs (functions, loops, conditionals) that are commonly associated with "high-level".
That said, this question probably belongs on Retrocomputing.