On May 1, 1964, Dartmouth professor John Kemeny, then-student Tom Kurtz, and a band of hand-picked undergraduate students pioneered a simplified programming language that would make computers accessible to the masses forever.
Marking the 50th anniversary of this innovation, the documentary recognizes their achievement and the advances in computer science it enabled.
Tom Kurtz: "I once estimated that even before Bill Gates got into the action at all, five million people knew how to write programs in BASIC. This is Before Gates…B.G.”
Watch the documentary (38 minutes)
Read the article in The Dartmouth (April 30, 2014)
Read the article in the Wall Street Journal (May 16, 2014, subscription required)
Listen to the interview on NPR (May 1, 2014)