Why is the Dow weighted by price? I fail to see how that makes any sense

I just learned this today, so maybe I'm slow. I've never really looked into how the Dow is constructed or what companies made up the Dow 30. I assumed that, because it was referred to as the "industrial average," that it was basically an "ex-tech" index. That isn't true. What was more surprising, though, was finding out it's weighted by stock price. This doesn't make any sense, as far as I can tell. Why is this? Does this just exist from a time before stock splits existed?

It just seems weird that a company could technically go from being the highest weighted position in the Dow to the lowest, simply by splitting it's stock.