Dartmouth BASIC
| Paradigm | imperative |
|---|---|
| Designed by | John Kemeny, Thomas Kurtz |
| First appeared | 1964 |
| OS | Dartmouth Time Sharing System |
| Influenced by | |
| FORTRAN, ALGOL | |
| Influenced | |
| Cf. list of BASIC dialects | |
Dartmouth BASIC is the original version of the BASIC programming language. It is so named because it was designed and implemented at Dartmouth College. The language was designed by John Kemeny and Thomas Kurtz as part of the Dartmouth Time Sharing System (DTSS) and was one of the first programming languages intended to be used interactively.
Several versions were produced at Dartmouth over the years, all implemented as compile and go compilers, unlike many of the versions of the language implemented elsewhere, which were interpreters. The first compiler was produced before the time-sharing system was ready. Known as CardBASIC, it was intended for the standard card-reader based batch processing system. Like all the following versions, it was implemented by a team of undergraduate programmers working under the direction of Kemeny and Kurtz. The first interactive version was made available to general users in June 1964; the second in October, 1964; the third in 1966; the fourth in 1969; the fifth in 1970; the sixth in 1971; and the seventh in 1979.
Work on the compiler and the operating system was done concurrently, and so the first BASIC programs were run in batch mode as part of the development process during early 1964. However, on May 1, 1964 at 4 a.m. ET, John Kemeny and John McGeachie ran the first BASIC programs to be executed successfully from terminals by the DTSS.
These programs ran, from 1964 to sometime in 1967, on two computers, a GE-235 to execute programs (such as ones written in BASIC) and a GE DN-30 (Datanet-30) to handle communications (to and from teletypes) and to schedule the execution of programs on the 235. This ingenious two-computer design was created by Tom Kurtz and John Kemeny.
It is not completely clear what the first programs were. However, the programs either consisted of the single line:
or were implementations of the Sieve of Eratosthenes, according to a 1974 interview in which Kemeny and McGeachie took part.
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