John G. Kemeny (left) and Thomas E. Kurtz made a truly Basic contribution to computer science in 1964. Courtesy Dartmouth Library __1964: __ In the predawn hours of May Day, two professors at ...

For those of us old enough to remember the beginnings of the microcomputer revolution, we can look back fondly on ‘the programming environment is the OS,’ a ton of BASIC programs, and typing in small ...

Nowadays, "basic" has a very different and derogatory Urban Dictionary-style meaning. Fifty years ago on this very day, however, it was the name given to a new computer-programming language born in a ...