BASIC Revolutionizes Computer Programming

1964
BASIC Dartmouth
At 4 a.m. on May 1, 1964, in College Hall, Professor John Kemeny and a student programmer simultaneously typed RUN on neighboring terminals.
  • Kemeny teaching

    Math professor and future Dartmouth president John Kemeny teaches BASIC programming to students in the Kiewit Computation Center. Photo courtesy of Dartmouth Library.

  • time-sharing-BASIC-Dartmouth

    The upgraded GE-635 system in the Kiewit Computation Center shortly after its installation. Faculty and undergraduates worked with General Electric to develop the operating system for the machine, which ran BASIC.

  • teletype

    Dartmouth students make heavy use of the computer by teletype consoles scattered about the campus. Courtesy of the Dartmouth Library.

  • BASIC 4
  • Kemeny

    Math professor and future Dartmouth president John Kemeny teaches BASIC programming to students in the Kiewit Computation Center. Photo courtesy of Dartmouth Library.

When they both got back correct answers to their simple programs, time-sharing and BASIC were born.

Kemeny, who later became Dartmouth's 13th president, Professor Tom Kurtz, and a number of undergraduate students worked together to revolutionize computing with the introduction of time-sharing and the BASIC programming language. Their innovations made computing accessible to all Dartmouth students and faculty, and soon after, to people across the nation and the world.

On April 30, 2014, Dartmouth marked 50 years of BASIC with a day of events. The celebration recognized the enduring impact of BASIC, showcased innovation in computing at Dartmouth today, and imagined what the next 50 years might hold.

Read more from "BASIC at 50"

 

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