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DARTMOUTH

(work-in-progress.)

1940

Bell Laboratories demonstrated first remote access to a digital computer using standard phone lines at McNutt Hall connected to Bell Labs’ Headquarters in New York.

1953

John Kemeny appointed full professor (age 27).

1955

John Kemeny appointed chairman of the Mathematics Department (through 1967).
John McCarthy becomes assistant professor.

1956

A small group of scientists (including John McCarthy) gathered for the Dartmouth Summer Research Project on Artificial Intelligence, which was the birth of this field of research.
John McCarthy moves to MIT as a research fellow in the autumn (moving to Stanford in 1962).
John Kemeny creates DARSIMCO (Dartmouth Simplified Code) for the IBM 704; found little traction due to the arrival of FORTRAN at MIT the next year.
Thomas Kurtz joins Mathematics Department (recruited by Kemeny).

1957

John Kemeny, along with Thompson and Snell, published Introduction to Finite Mathematics.

1959

Published Finite Mathematical Structures.
Purchase of the Librascope General Precision (LGP-30) desk-size computer (officially purchased as a piece of furniture).
One student wrote a FORTRAN-inspired language called DART for the LPG-30.

1960

Published Finite Markov Chains (with Snell).

1961

Stephen Garland, Robert Hargraves, Jorge Llacer, Anthony Knapp and Thomas Kurtz create Dartmouth ALGOL 30; based originally on ALGOL 58 and then ALGOL 60.
Stephen Garland and Anthony Knapp developed a “load-and-go” system known as SCALP (Self Contained Algol Processor).
During a visit to MIT, John McCarthy asked Kurtz suggested using time-sharing for their efforts to bring computing to the masses. In an experiment to test the concept, students were broken into groups of five and given turns on the LGP-30 using SCALP. Computer time of 15-minutes per group. It was found that students could generally complete their programs in two or three “turnarounds” during a single session suggestion that an interactive system allowing hundreds of students could be handled using a single machine.
(Elsewhere) ASCII standard begins in May.

1962

John Kemeny and Sidney Marshall (high school student) create DOPE (Dartmouth Oversimplified Programming Experiment). This experiment was utilized by a single freshman computing class.
Published Finite Mathematics with Business Applications.

1963

(Elsewhere) ASCII standard, first edition published.
(Elsewhere) The Teletype Model 33 is introduced; costing less than other teleprinters and terminals such as the Friden Flexowriter (used on the LGP-30) and IBM 1050. Of note, based on ASCII (7-bit) instead of the established Baudot code (5-bit) - leading it to influence the de facto standards that developed over the next two decades.
Kemeny begins working on the BASIC compiler during the Summer; borrowing time on an existing GE-225 (access provided by General Electric).
Michael Busch and John McGeachie begin working on the OS (during the Fall).
Project officially begins September; draft specifications published in November.

1964

Hardware arrives on campus in February, operational by mid-March with official hand-over April 1.
John Kemeny and John McGeachie ran the first BASIC program on this system May 1st at 4AM. At this point, 3 terminals were in use.
First BASIC Instruction Manual
GE-225 replaced by a faster GE-235. (Side note, GE began to refer to the hardware configuration at Dartmouth as the GE-265; eventually to be called the Mark I Time-Sharing System)
By the fall, 20 terminals were in use.
Group of teachers at the University of Minnesota College of Education began using Dartmouth’s system via long-distance calls (eventually switching to a more locally available Minneapolis-based Pillsbury Company GE computer).

1965

ALGOL 30 used as the basis for an implementation of ALGOL 60 on DTSS.
Approached GE for support with ongoing development; GE offered the new GE-635 in September. To house such a machine, a new building would be needed.

1966

BASIC, Third Edition
The Kiewit Computation Center opens in December.
Thomas Kurtz appointed as Director of the Kiewit Computation Center at Dartmouth (through 1975).
While waiting for the GE-635, the GE-635 at Rome Air Development Center was used to develop MOLDS (Multiple User On-Line Debugging System)

1967

GE-635 operational; using MOLDS new operating system was fully functional in September. (GE-265 sold off.) GE goes on to sell this configuration as Mark II Time-Sharing Systems.
BASIC, Fourth Edition
(Elsewhere) ASCII revised.

1968

(Elsewhere) HP releases the 2000A Timeshare System including HP Time-Shared BASIC that supported up to 16 users logged in at once. This combination is almost identical to the DTSS setup except that HP’s BASIC used as semi-compiled tokenized format for storing programs.
(Elsewhere) Twenty Minneapolis–Saint Paul area school districts and the College of Education founded TIES (Total Information for Educational Systems) to provide time-sharing service on a HP 2000, training, and software.

1969

Phase II development (“the ideal operating system”) completed in March - system officially named the Dartmouth Time-Sharing System.
Sidney Marshall produced an implementation of ALGOL 68 for DTSS.
(Elsewhere) ASCII format for Network Interchange described.
(Elsewhere) David Ahl joins Digital Equipment’s expanding educational sales division. At this point, the PDP-8 was combined with educational language FOCAL; which Ahl found prospective customers were not interested. Ahl found no interest on the part of DEC management or software development departments to produce a version of BASIC; additionally, they weren’t interested in supporting FOCAL on other of their own machines. He also noted increasing hostility to any idea of allowing others to produce a version of FOCAL. In order to compete, he hired a developer to create BASIC-8 and, by doing so, the combination of the PDP-8 with BASIC-8 (including his ported examples) as an immediate best-seller. This combination would later be referred to as Edusystems. (Side note: DEC would ultimately offer five different BASICs for the PDP-8; each one making up for limitations of the original minimal implementation.)

1970

John Kemeny becomes president of Dartmouth 1970 (through 1981).
BASIC, Fifth Edition
(Elsewhere) With the release of the PDP-11, a new and greatly expanded dialect of BASIC was introduced… BASIC-PLUS.

1971

BASIC, Sixth Edition
(Elsewhere) Work begins on what would eventually become The Oregon Trail (using an HP 2100).

1972

John Kemeny presided over the coeducation of Dartmouth; additionally, instituted year-round operations.
Three-year deal with GE completed, GE gifted the machine to the college. The two teams (Dartmouth and GE) remained in contact and several good-faith attempts were made to continue relationship; little collaboration occurred and partnership officially ended September 20th.
Although other languages were available on DTSS, at this time 98% of its programs were written in BASIC.
(Elsewhere) The People’s Computer Company publishes first newsletter in October.

1973

(Elsewhere) David Ahl publishes 101 BASIC Games.
(Elsewhere) MECC (Minnesota Educational Computing Consortium) founded.

1974

Work begins on ANSI/ECMA “Minimal BASIC”
(Elsewhere) Creative Computing magazine introduced (David Ahl).

1975

(Elsewhere) David Ahl purchases 101 BASIC Games from DEC, re-launched as BASIC Computer Games; this book goes on to become the first million-selling computer book.

1975

Thomas Kurtz appointed Director of the Office of Academic Computing (through 1978).

1976

January, First draft of Minimal BASIC published.
Stephen Garland creates SBASIC (a BASIC pre-processor providing structured-language support).
(Elsewhere) First issue of Dr. Dobb’s Journal published in January.

1977

December, ECMA “Minimal BASIC”
(Elsewhere) MTS (MECC Timesharing System) installed running on a Control Data Corporation Cyber 73 mainframe.

1979

Thomas Kurtz and Stephen Garland started a Computer and Information Systems master’s program at Dartmouth.
ANSI X3.60-1978 “Minimal BASIC”

1980

BASIC, Seventh Edition (primarily by Stephen Garland).

1981

As Chairman of the Computer Science Advanced Placement Committee, The College Board, Stephen Garland was involved in developing the original Advanced Placement Course in Computer Science… opting for PASCAL (not BASIC).

1982

BASIC, Eighth Edition (primarily by Stephen Garland).
(Elsewhere) MTS touts more than 950 programs in its library.

1983

Kemeny and Kurtz co-founded True BASIC Inc.; based initially on BASIC, Seventh Edition.

1985

Kemeny and Kurtz published Back To BASIC.

1987

ANSI X3.113-1987 “Standard BASIC” ratified.

Video

Emulation

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DTSS Emulator
Dartmouth BASIC Interpreter by Dancresp