BASIC, the revolutionary computer programming language, turns 50

New Delhi: 50 years ago, BASIC - the computer programming language - was invented Dartmouth College, Hanover, USA. Short for Beginners' All-purpose Symbolic Instruction Code, BASIC was the brainchild of two Dartmouth mathematicians, Thomas Kurtz and John Kemeny.

At 4 AM on May 1, 1964, Kemeny and a student programmer simultaneously typed "RUN" on neighbouring terminals, executing the first commands of what would become the world's most widely-used computer language.

When they both got back correct answers to their simple programs, timesharing and BASIC were born. Timesharing allowed more than one person to work on a comptuer at a time.

Their innovations made computing accessible first to Dartmouth students and faculty, and soon after, to people across the world. BASIC revolutionised computer programming for the non-experts using simple English words.

15 statement types in the original BASIC computer programming language

LET Introduces the assignment statement, and is required

PRINT Provides free-form output

END Is required

READ Assigns values to variables from internal data

DATA Introduces internal data

GOTO Does just that, transfers to another line-numbered statement

IF Gives a conditional GOTO

FOR Introduces the looping construct

NEXT Terminates the looping construct

GOSUB Does a GOTO to a subroutine

RETURN Returns from the end of the subroutine

DEF Introduces programmer-defined functions

DIM Allows dimensioning arrays

REM Provides comments

STOP Same as reaching the END statement

Read the first BASIC instruction manual

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