[SIGCIS-Members] In memory of Thomas Kurtz

[Johannah Rodgers]

Thank you so much for your e-mail, Annette, and for letting us know about
this news!

All best,

Johannah

On Thu, Nov 21, 2024 at 12:59 PM Annette Vee via Members <
members at lists.sigcis.org> wrote:

> 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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-- 
johannahrodgers at gmail.com
www.johannahrodgers.net
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