> Consider that Docker and other container based systems also deploy images.

Consider also that Docker was the only one to really get popular, perhaps because it promoted the idea of using a text-based "Dockerfile" as your source of truth and treating the images as transitory built artifacts (however false this was in practice).

It's still mostly true in practice. You don't add one more layer to your image to build the next version, you rebuild it from the Dockerfile, which is the opposite of Smalltalk approach.

Arguably it goes back to chroot-stuff, and LXC predates Docker by some five years or so. I don't remember the details well but Solaris had similar containers, maybe even before LXC arrived.

I'd say the clown popularised it outside of Linux and Unix sysadmin circles, rather than the Dockerfile format itself.