Yes, definitely! What I meant by my statement was no system has been dependant on a separate extension meta-property since FAT32 (pre-vfat). But yes, you're absolutely right that the 3 character extension standard is much older than FAT32.

I didn't think it was quite as old as the 60s though? CP/M and FAT are mid-to-late 70s. VMS was around the same time too, or maybe slightly earlier. What else stored the extension as a separate meta-property to the file name?