[vcf-midatlantic] early (original?) Dartmouth BASIC documentation

Glenn Roberts glenn.f.roberts at gmail.com
Thu Jul 12 10:16:00 EDT 2018


I've been helping a friend clean out some closets after her husband died -
he was like many of us and had a lot of history in computing.  While he had
already gotten rid of early hardware I did find some interesting artifacts
in his bookshelves.

One book that caught my attention is "a manual for BASIC" by John Kemeny and
Thomas Kurtz (Dartmouth).  It is copyrighted 1965 by Dartmouth and appears
to be the original manual for Dartmouth's BASIC.  The preface acknowledges
an NSF grant for funding the language development.  Includes
diagram/instructions for using the Model 33 teletype and paper tape!

Anyway, just thought I'd share with this group.  I imagine there aren't too
many copies of this left around.  Google search turned up some hits but I
didn't see any scans of the book.  It's pretty short (63 pp.)  Nice keepsake
from the earliest days of BASIC...

- Glenn






More information about the vcf-midatlantic mailing list