CS378, History Of Computing
Week 10, Weekly Report
Due 2004 Oct 28

Reports for History of Computing CS378
Joseph Lopez
2004 Oct 28

Beginner’s All-purpose Symbolic Instruction Code

BASIC was invented in 1964 at Dartmouth College by John Kemeny and Thomas Kurtz.(1) It was through a National Science Foundation (NSF) grant of $500,000 dollars that research on the programming language began. The NSF grant was specifically given to Dartmouth College, “for the development of a time-sharing system and the computer language BASIC.”(2) The first computer to run BASIC was the GE-225, a main frame computer that was also one of the first to be able to time share. Time sharing is the ability for a computer to have multiple sessions run at once. The GE-225 accomplished time share by having multiple teletypes hooked up to it at once. The concept behind BASIC was to create a language that allowed novice programmers to understand core concepts of programming. BASIC quickly became a standard language due to its ease of use and rapid distribution.

With the initial release of BASIC, project developers took steps to insure its popularity. By offering teletype systems to both collegiate institutions as well as secondary schools, professionals and novices were equally introduced to BASIC. This loosely thrown together education program would go on to become known as the Dartmouth Educational Network.(2) These steps contributed greatly to its mass acceptance by letting novices enjoy an intuitive language while providing powerful programming capabilities to professionals.

Another step the developers took to make BASIC become a universal language was registering the language under public domain, which allows others to not only look at the source code but edit and develop their own renditions. Allowing BASIC to be public domain, the developers left room for customization which strengthened its acceptance among users with specific needs. Such as people who wanted to make custom ports of the language for specific main frames and microcomputers.

In the late 1970’s BASIC was ported to the Altair by Microsoft founders Bill Gates and Paul Allen, as well as Monte Davidoff, it was named Altair_BASIC. The use of Altair_BASIC interested amateur and professional computer makers because it showed how computing was becoming miniaturized and economical.

In the 1980’s variants of BASIC flourished and millions accepted BASIC as the choice language for programming. Microsoft would go on to make their own variant of BASIC, QBASIC, which was written for IBM compatible PC’s as well as Mainframes. Apple also used BASIC for its Apple II personal computer. Most personal computers of the late 70’s and early 80’s came with BASIC stored on a ROM, this allowed users the ability to write programs without having to use expensive tape drives or hard drives.(1)

In the mid eighties many features would be added to QBASIC such as graphical output and sound capabilities. Novices would continue to learn QBASIC (in its original form) as their first language however with the advancement of hardware and software design, languages such as Pascal, took over QBASIC as the preferred language for professional uses. Microsoft answered this issue in the 1990’s with the release of Visual Basic. Visual Basic used the core ideas of BASIC however, it extended it’s usability to Graphical User Interface’s (GUI’s) that had been developed since QBASIC’s initial introduction. The GUI interface provided a visual way of representing code, which created a new way of programming, while also retaining the ability to program using text editing. Visual Basic is still used to this day in the form of Visual Studio by computer programmers.

Kemeny and Kurtz envisioned a programming language that users could easily learn while providing solutions for sophisticated computer scientists. Some key design elements such as the shielding of the user from the operating system, using English commands and not requiring understanding of the computer hardware highly contributed to the early adoption of BASIC. (1) The first recommended use of BASIC was by Dartmouth College to automate their library system.(1) BASIC would go on to be used for scientific research and novice programming alike, forever changing the relationship between society and computing solutions.

Appendix

Early BASIC Format (1)

10 INPUT "What is your name: "; U$
 20 PRINT "Hello "; U$
 25 REM
 30 INPUT "How many stars do you want: "; N
 35 S$ = ""
 40 FOR I = 1 TO N
 50 S$ = S$ + "*"
 55 NEXT I
 60 PRINT S$
 65 REM
 70 INPUT "Do you want more stars? "; A$
 80 IF LEN(A$) = 0 GOTO 70
 90 A$ = LEFT$(A$, 1)
100 IF (A$ = "Y") OR (A$ = "y") THEN GOTO 30
110 PRINT "Goodbye ";
120 FOR I = 1 TO 200
130 PRINT U$; " ";
140 NEXT I
150 PRINT

Notes

1. Wikipedia, http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/BASIC_programming_language (accessed Oct 25 2004)

2. Dartmouth College Website, http://www.dartmouth.edu/comp/about/history/timeline/1960s/64/ (accessed Oct 27 2004)