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All Things Considered
Tue April 22, 2014
BASIC: How Dartmouth Helped Open Programming (And Gaming) To Everybody
When you think of the places that have shaped technology the most, you might think of the garage where Apple’s Steve Jobs and Steve Wozniak put together their first personal computers. You might think of the buildings at Harvard where Mark Zuckerberg started building a social website then known as “The Facebook.” Or you might think of the facilities in Washington state where Microsoft made billions selling its Windows operating system.
Well, you might want to add one more place to that list: Dartmouth College, which is marking the 50th anniversary of the development of a computer language known as BASIC.
To learn more, we again turn to David Brooks, who writes the weekly GraniteGeek science column for the Nashua Telegraph and GraniteGeek.org. He speaks with All Things Considered host Brady Carlson about BASIC's history and legacy.