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Birth of BASIC

Dartmouth · 1.5M views · 2014-08-05 · 38:13

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Overview

A Dartmouth-produced documentary on how professors John Kemeny and Tom Kurtz, with a group of undergraduates, invented the BASIC language. It covers the creation of BASIC and the early time-sharing environment at Dartmouth.

On Hacker News

HN recommends it as the definitive documentary on BASIC's origins, and it resurfaces whenever BASIC or Kurtz comes up.

Recommended by 3 HN people across 3 months · HN mentions 2021–2024

Topics

History of computingProgramming language designDocumentaries & storytelling
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basicdartmouthkemenykurtzprogramming languages

What people said

nettework · 2024-11 · Strong recommendation

I interviewed Tom Kurtz in 2017. He was so generous, and as brilliant as you'd expect. He wrote me a memo on "Grammatical Simplifications in BASIC." He loved memos--was an academic mathematician at heart, even at 89! It was his idea to make computing accessible--he (modestly) credits Kemeny with all the other ideas about BASIC and the Dartmouth Time-Sharing System (DTSS). I wrote about the interview here: [LINK] . The Birth of BASIC documentary that Dartmouth did for the 50th anniversary is excellent and features him prominently: [VIDEO]

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WoodenChair · 2024-05 · Recommendation

There's a really good documentary on the creation of BASIC at Dartmouth (made by Dartmouth): [VIDEO] If you don't want to watch the documentary, we did a shorter podcast episode about it: [LINK]

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ArtWomb · 2021-02 · Recommendation

I enjoy messing around in the Owlet browser-based BBC BASIC editor. 8-bit graphics still has a place in modern web design ;) [LINK] Related doc on youtube: "Birth of BASIC" [VIDEO]

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Sources

Video by Dartmouth, played through YouTube.

Data and selection notes

HN summaries and labels may contain AI errors. HN dates refer to discussions, not video publication.

HN Library: HackerTube export (2026-10-31) and open-index/hacker-news. Upstream summaries and classifications may contain AI errors.

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