The Boot-Up Heard Round the World
Thomas Kurtz ’50
Kurtz, the co-creator of the BASIC computer languauge, was known for his intellectual curiosity and analytical skills that would shape his future endeavors.
Late in the 1950s, Dartmouth College students were struggling to learn the complex computing languages that were then in use. Hoping to make computing more accessible, Thomas Kurtz '50 and fellow Dartmouth professor John G. Kemeny began drafting and redrafting simpler computer codes. On May 1, 1964, at 4:00 A.M., Dartmouth's General Electric GE-225 mainframe started running using Kemeny and Kurtz's new language: BASIC. Think of it as the boot-up heard around the world.
Due to the language's user-friendliness and some proselytizing on the part of its inventors, BASIC became computer vernacular -- and when three firms (MOS Technology, Apple, and the Tandy Corporation) raced to introduce their commercially viable personal computers in 1976, they all used BASIC.
Kurtz's innovations in computer technology would be unimaginable, however, had it not been for his time at Knox, when he fell under the mentoring influence of Professor Emeritus of Mathematics Rothwell Stephens. "My academic major was mathematics," said Kurtz, "but Rothwell encouraged my interest in statistics and suggested that I apply to the graduate school at Princeton. And it was during my graduate program there that I became interested in computers."