HELLO

DARTMOUTH TIMESHARING ON AT 4:07AM ON MAY 1, 1964

2 USERS

OLD BASIC50***

READY

RUN

At 4 a.m. on May 1, 1964, in the basement of College Hall, Professor John Kemeny and a student programmer simultaneously typed RUN on neighboring terminals. When they both got back correct answers to their simple programs, time-sharing and BASIC were born.

Kemeny, who later became Dartmouth's 13th president, Professor Tom Kurtz, and a number of undergraduate students worked together to revolutionize computing with the introduction of time-sharing and the BASIC programming language. Their innovations made computing accessible to all Dartmouth students and faculty, and soon after, to people across the nation and the world.

This year, Dartmouth marked 50 years of BASIC with a day of events on Wednesday, April 30. The celebration recognized the enduring impact of BASIC, showcased innovation in computing at Dartmouth today, and imagined what the next 50 years might hold.