Almost but not quite precisely true!
Really early versions of the OS didn’t have either option. In Finder 1.0, the Special menu included “Clean Up”, “Empty Trash”, and “Erase Disk”. “Set Startup” was introduced later in 1984 with Finder 1.1g (the first version I personally used back then). If you wanted to turn off your Mac, you just turned it off.
The idea that you should eject your disks and restart your Mac when you’re done with it was formalized in Finder 4.1 (1985), but the menu item to do that was called “Shut Down”, not Restart. (The MiniFinder was introduced at the same time. I remember thinking Finder 4.1 was super cool as a 10-year-old.)
Later, I believe in 1987 when the Mac II with soft power was introduced, that menu item was more appropriately renamed “Restart”, and the proper “Shut Down” option was added.
(My memory for the above was jogged by this great list:
https://apple.fandom.com/wiki/List_of_Finder_versions)