surely not - i used cp/m 1.x back in the late 1970s and by that time VMS was a well-developed and sophisticated OS, unlike cp/m which was something you could have knocked up in a week or so.
Not really, no.
It's not that they weren't used. It's that they didn't exist yet.
The first 8-bit microprocessor, the Intel 8008, was 1972. The first chip for which CP/M was developed was the 8080 in 1974. It took a few years for mass availability.
Given that you got your years badly wrong in your first comment, did you not think "hey I should check this" before commenting again?