Tomas Eugene Kurtz, one of the creators of the BASIC programming language, died on November 12 at the age of 96. He created BASIC in 1963 with John G. Kemeny while working at Dartmouth College.
BASIC is an acronym for Beginners' All-purpose Symbolic Instruction Code that allows anyone to produce programs for computers. At that time computer programming languages such as Fortran and ALGOL were too complex to be learned by individuals without technical expertise.
BASIC was also produced to encourage the use of computers among Dartmouth College students through the Dartmouth Time Sharing System (DTSS). During the 60s, access to computers was difficult because personal computers did not yet exist. DTSS allows up to 300 users to share a computer simultaneously using a teletype terminal.