50 Years of BASIC: The Programming Language That Made Computers Personal

Congratulations! Today on May 1st 2014 BASIC celebrates its 50th birthday. The researchers John G. Kemeny and Thomas E. Kurtz designed the original BASIC language at Dartmouth College in New Hampshire in 1964. BASIC was first time run on the school’s General Electric computer system on May 1st 1964 – at 4 pm to be precise.

They wanted to enable students in fields other than science and mathematics to use computers. Back then only scientists and mathematicians tended to learn how to use computers due to the complexity.

There are a lot of stuff on the Internet about this celebration, so I just want to mention the Time article where I read about it. It’s a long and detailed piece worth reading. And you may also check out Wikipedia.

BTW: BASIC is an acronym for “Beginner’s All-purpose Symbolic Instruction Code”.f

(Image: Wikipedia)