Not strictly true:
Skill challenges existed for 3e, they just weren't referred to as such, nor described in such detail.
I didn't mention 3E but if they weren't called skill challenges nor were they described in detail it doesn't sound like it's "not strictly true" - it sounds like they didn't exist in 3E either as a concept presented in the rules. That matters. I'm not disagreeing that you can make them work (better than any of the earlier editions) but it is a retrofit one might want to mention when starting a campaign.
2e had "nonweapon proficiencies", which were actually carried forward from Oriental Adventures, Dungeoneers Survival Guide & Wilderness Survival Guide, all of which were 1e products. So it isn't so far from 4e skill challenges as it may first appear.
Yes, 1.5 had some NWP's added on late. IME they were rarely used and little loved. Even today I don't see retro 1E games using NWP's (it's kind of a dividing line for 1E vs. 2E fans) so I don't think an "NWP Challenge" is going to be a feature of 1E games. They played a much bigger role in 2E being part of the core rules and you could rig up something like a skill challenge there pretty easily.
And using checks based on stats has always been encouraged. Skills are just a method of differentiating focus and inate ability. In previous versions of the game, a stat check with a bonus for level would've sufficed, if it was deemed reasonable that the character possibly had the knowledge of the skill in question.
But a skill challenge would involve multiple stat checks - that's kind of the point - and you're likely to end up with "OK now the mage rolls an INT check, OK, now the Cleric rolls a Wis check, OK," etc. In effect each character has 1 good skill, maybe 1 or 2 OK skills, and a few average to poor skills. There's not enough detail there to make it very interesting. As a concept the Skill Challenge/NWP Challenge works great when there's a skill system to support it but the two versions of the game I specifically mentioned don't have one in their original versions which were played by most people at the time.
You could probably get more out of a "Party Challenge" - to get across this weird bridge the fighter has to cut a rope or hold back a wooden lever while the thief disarms a trap and the mage casts knock -all at the same time. Let them use their class abilities rather than a slapped-on skill system or a series of stat checks and make it count for something. You would probably need a diagram like something out of Grimtooth's Traps to make sense of it but a lot of the old dungeons featured some pretty weird mechanical or magical devices or traps or rooms and something like this could liven it up a bit.
Thus it is perfectly possible to recreate a similar feel to that of a 4e skill challenge. That the rules at the time didn't describe this is hardly a surprise, but that does not prevent those rules from flexing to accommodate the idea. In fact, the early rules were expected to be bent by creative players. No, it isn't "By the BOOK rulez!" But it is acknowledging a good idea...
I don't think it is a similar feel - 4E players know that skill challenges are part of the system and it's a consideration during character creation as in "what do I want to be good at besides straight-up combat." They can use ability score placement, trained/untrained skill selections, feats, powers, multiclassing, and even magic items to design for this. Basic/1E players don't have to worry about this as the system primarily describes combat and leaves the rest to the players and DM to work out. Quantifying non-combat/thievery character abilities in a Basic/1E game is a fairly significant change that goes way beyond letting you add skill challenges - typically it stomps on the Thief class in particular - so it's not as simple as just bolting something on. Player expectations are a factor too as a lot of the appeal of the old games is that they are fast and loose outside of combat and adding a skill system can drag that down
I'm not disagreeing that it's possible to rig up something like a skill challenge in any edition - I'm saying that we didn't then and that it's not a good fit with some of them. I could add a powers system onto a Basic game if I wanted to but that doesn't make it a good idea. There is an emphasis on different things in each edition and some of them work fine with it - 3E gives a player most of the same tools as 4E to optimize for skill challenges, losing the powers angle but gaining multiclassing flexibility - but some of them don't.
Your original comment was that you could rig up a skill challenge system for traps in any edition - In 1E the Thief has the trap-defeating skills so he's the guy who does it when mechanical resolution is called for. When the DM wants more it involves descriptions of who's looking where and for what. I just haven't seen a huge demand for an in-between step like a skill challenge in those games and the mechanics and class structure don't really support it.
