[SIGCIS-Members] In memory of Thomas Kurtz

[Annette Vee]

Hello, SIGCIS,

Folks here likely saw this, but I didn't see it come through (apologies if
I missed it). Thomas Kurtz, who developed BASIC and the Dartmouth
Time-Sharing System (DTSS) with John Kemeny, passed away last week, at 96.

NY Times obit
<https://www.nytimes.com/2024/11/16/technology/thomas-kurtz-dead.html>:
“At Dartmouth, long before the days of laptops and smartphones, he worked
to give more students access to computers. That work helped propel
generations into a new world.”

Dartmouth obit
<https://faculty.dartmouth.edu/artsandsciences/news/2024/11/remembering-computing-legend-thomas-kurtz>:
"Dartmouth
had the largest open-stack library in the world at that time in a college
of this type, and the concept of open-stack computing, that was my idea,"
Kurtz said. "Thatʼs one of the few ideas I had that Kemeny didnʼt have."
[he was modest, and deeply admired Kemeny!]

Computer History Museum obit
<https://computerhistory.org/blog/in-memoriam-thomas-e-kurtz-1928-2024/>:
"DTSS was the earliest successful, large-scale timesharing system, a
remarkable achievement. [...] DTSS was unveiled on May 1, 1964, along with
BASIC. By that fall, hundreds of students were exploring BASIC on the 20
terminals around campus."

People on HackerNews <https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=42141761> are
paying their respects by mentioning the influence of BASIC on their lives
and careers.

I interviewed him in 2017. He was so generous, and as brilliant as you'd
expect. He wrote me a memo on "Grammatical Simplifications in BASIC." He
loved memos--was an academic mathematician at heart, even at 89! I wrote
about the interview here:
https://annettevee.substack.com/p/thomas-kurtz-basic-and-computing and also
in 2023, in a critical code studies article, "BASIC FTBALL and Computer
Programming for All
<https://www.digitalhumanities.org/dhq/vol/17/2/000696/000696.html>”

Other great work on BASIC that many here already know:
The Birth of BASIC documentary <https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WYPNjSoDrqw>:
from the 50th anniversary of BASIC, in 2014.
Rankin, J. (2018) A People's History of Computing in the United States.
Harvard: Harvard University Press.
Montfort, N. et al. (2014) 10 PRINT CHR$(205.5+RND(1));: GOTO 10,
Cambridge: MIT Press.

Annette

Annette Vee

Associate Professor of English

University of Pittsburgh
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