Editing BASIC (section)

== Origin ==
[[John G. Kemeny]] was the chairman of the Dartmouth College Mathematics Department. Based largely on his reputation as an innovator in math teaching, in 1959 the college won an [[Alfred P. Sloan Foundation]] award for $500,000 to build a new department building.<ref>{{cite magazine |url=https://content.time.com/time/subscriber/article/0,33009,825616,00.html |title= High Math at Hanover |date=23 February 1959 |magazine=Time}}</ref> [[Thomas E. Kurtz]] had joined the department in 1956, and from the 1960s Kemeny and Kurtz agreed on the need for programming literacy among students outside the traditional [[Science, technology, engineering, and mathematics|STEM]] fields. Kemeny later noted that "Our vision was that every student on campus should have access to a [[computer]], and any faculty member should be able to use a computer in the classroom whenever appropriate. It was as simple as that."{{sfn|Time|2014}}

Kemeny and Kurtz had made two previous experiments with simplified languages, [[DARSIMCO]] (Dartmouth Simplified Code) and [[DOPE (Dartmouth Oversimplified Programming Experiment)]]. These did not progress past a single freshman class. New experiments using [[Fortran]] and [[ALGOL]] followed, but Kurtz concluded these languages were too tricky for what they desired. As Kurtz noted, Fortran had numerous oddly formed commands, notably an "almost impossible-to-memorize convention for specifying a loop: {{code|2=fortran|1=DO 100, I = 1, 10, 2}}. Is it '1, 10, 2' or '1, 2, 10', and is the comma after the line number required or not?"{{sfn|Time|2014}}

Moreover, the lack of any sort of immediate feedback was a key problem; the machines of the era used [[batch processing]] and took a long time to complete a run of a program. While Kurtz was visiting [[MIT]], [[John McCarthy (computer scientist)|John McCarthy]] suggested that [[time-sharing]] offered a solution; a single machine could divide up its processing time among many users, giving them the illusion of having a (slow) computer to themselves.<ref name="Rankin">{{Citation | last = Rankin| first = Joy Lisi | title = A People's History of Computing in the United States | place = Cambridge, Massachusetts  | publisher = Harvard University Press | year = 2018| isbn = 9780674970977 }}, p. 23</ref> Small programs would return results in a few seconds. This led to increasing interest in a system using time-sharing and a new language specifically for use by non-STEM students.{{sfn|Time|2014}}

Kemeny wrote the first version of BASIC. The [[acronym]] ''BASIC'' comes from the name of an unpublished paper by Thomas Kurtz.<ref>{{Cite web|url=http://www.catb.org/jargon/html/B/BASIC.html|title=BASIC|website=[[Jargon File]]|access-date=June 13, 2017}}</ref> The new language was heavily patterned on FORTRAN II; statements were one-to-a-line, numbers were used to indicate the target of loops and branches, and many of the commands were similar or identical to Fortran. However, the [[Syntax (programming languages)|syntax]] was changed wherever it could be improved. For instance, the difficult to remember <code>DO</code> loop was replaced by the much easier to remember {{code|2=basic|1=FOR I = 1 TO 10 STEP 2}}, and the line number used in the DO was instead indicated by the <code>NEXT I</code>.{{efn|Fortran's DO had a <code>continue</code> for this purpose, but still required the line number to be entered.}} Likewise, the cryptic <code>IF</code> statement of Fortran, whose syntax matched a particular instruction of the machine on which it was originally written, became the simpler {{code|2=basic|1=IF I=5 THEN GOTO 100}}. These changes made the language much less idiosyncratic while still having an overall structure and feel similar to the original FORTRAN.{{sfn|Time|2014}}

The project received a $300,000 grant from the [[National Science Foundation]], which was used to purchase a [[GE-225]] computer for processing, and a Datanet-30 realtime processor to handle the [[Teletype Model 33]] [[teleprinter]]s used for input and output. A team of a dozen undergraduates worked on the project for about a year, writing both the DTSS system and the BASIC compiler.{{sfn|Time|2014}} The first version BASIC language was released on 1 May 1964.<ref>{{Cite web|url=http://cis-alumni.org/TKurtz.html|title=Thomas E. Kurtz – History of Computer Programming Languages|website=cis-alumni.org|language=en|access-date=June 13, 2017}}</ref><ref>{{cite magazine|url=https://www.wired.com/2008/05/dayintech-0501-2/|title=May 1, 1964: First Basic Program Runs|last=Alfred|first=Randy|magazine=[[Wired (magazine)|Wired]]|date=January 5, 2008|access-date=June 13, 2017}}</ref>

Initially, BASIC concentrated on supporting straightforward mathematical work, with [[matrix (mathematics)|matrix]] arithmetic support from its initial implementation as a batch language, and [[character string]] functionality being added by 1965. Usage in the university rapidly expanded, requiring the main CPU to be replaced by a GE-235,{{sfn|Time|2014}} and still later by a GE-635. By the early 1970s there were hundreds of terminals connected to the machines at Dartmouth, some of them remotely.

Wanting use of the language to become widespread, its designers made the compiler available free of charge. In the 1960s, software became a chargeable commodity; until then, it was provided without charge as a service with expensive computers, usually available only to lease. They also made it available to high schools in the [[Hanover, New Hampshire]], area and regionally throughout New England on Teletype Model 33 and Model 35 teleprinter terminals connected to Dartmouth via dial-up phone lines, and they put considerable effort into promoting the language. In the following years, as other dialects of BASIC appeared, Kemeny and Kurtz's original BASIC dialect became known as ''[[Dartmouth BASIC]]''.

New Hampshire recognized the accomplishment in 2019 when it erected a highway historical marker in Hanover describing the creation of "the first user-friendly programming language".<ref name = "Brooks, Concord Monitor, 2019">{{ Cite web | url = https://granitegeek.concordmonitor.com/2019/06/11/finally-a-historical-marker-that-talks-about-something-important/ | title = Finally, a historical marker that talks about something important | access-date = 11 August 2019 | first = David | last = Brooks | date = 11 June 2019 | website = [[Concord Monitor]] | archive-url = https://web.archive.org/web/20190611180750/https://granitegeek.concordmonitor.com/2019/06/11/finally-a-historical-marker-that-talks-about-something-important/ | archive-date = 11 June 2019 | df = dmy-all }}</ref>