<div dir="ltr">Thank you so much for your e-mail, Annette, and for letting us know about this news!<div><br></div><div>All best, </div><div><br></div><div>Johannah</div></div><br><div class="gmail_quote"><div dir="ltr" class="gmail_attr">On Thu, Nov 21, 2024 at 12:59 PM Annette Vee via Members <<a href="mailto:members@lists.sigcis.org">members@lists.sigcis.org</a>> wrote:<br></div><blockquote class="gmail_quote" style="margin:0px 0px 0px 0.8ex;border-left:1px solid rgb(204,204,204);padding-left:1ex"><div dir="ltr">Hello, SIGCIS, <div><br></div><div>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. </div><div><br></div><div><a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2024/11/16/technology/thomas-kurtz-dead.html" target="_blank">NY Times obit</a>: “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.”</div><div><br></div><div><a href="https://faculty.dartmouth.edu/artsandsciences/news/2024/11/remembering-computing-legend-thomas-kurtz" target="_blank">Dartmouth obit</a>: "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!]</div><div><br></div><div><a href="https://computerhistory.org/blog/in-memoriam-thomas-e-kurtz-1928-2024/" target="_blank">Computer History Museum obit</a>: "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."</div><div><br></div><div>People on <a href="https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=42141761" target="_blank">HackerNews</a> are paying their respects by mentioning the influence of BASIC on their lives and careers.</div><div><br></div><div>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: <a href="https://annettevee.substack.com/p/thomas-kurtz-basic-and-computing" target="_blank">https://annettevee.substack.com/p/thomas-kurtz-basic-and-computing</a> and also in 2023, in a critical code studies article, "<a href="https://www.digitalhumanities.org/dhq/vol/17/2/000696/000696.html" target="_blank">BASIC FTBALL and Computer Programming for All</a>” </div><div><br></div><div>Other great work on BASIC that many here already know:</div><div><a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WYPNjSoDrqw" target="_blank">The Birth of BASIC documentary</a>: from the 50th anniversary of BASIC, in 2014. </div><div>Rankin, J. (2018) A People's History of Computing in the United States. Harvard: Harvard University Press.<br></div><div>Montfort, N. et al. (2014) 10 PRINT CHR$(205.5+RND(1));: GOTO 10, Cambridge: MIT Press.<br></div><div><br></div><div>Annette</div><div><br></div><div><p style="color:rgb(0,0,0);font-size:12pt;margin:0in;font-family:Aptos,sans-serif">Annette Vee</p><p style="color:rgb(0,0,0);font-size:12pt;margin:0in;font-family:Aptos,sans-serif">Associate Professor of English</p><p style="color:rgb(0,0,0);font-size:12pt;margin:0in;font-family:Aptos,sans-serif">University of Pittsburgh</p></div><div><br></div><div><br></div></div>
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</blockquote></div><div><br clear="all"></div><div><br></div><span class="gmail_signature_prefix">-- </span><br><div dir="ltr" class="gmail_signature"><div dir="ltr"><div><div dir="ltr"><div><a href="mailto:johannahrodgers@gmail.com" target="_blank">johannahrodgers@gmail.com</a><br></div><div><a href="http://www.johannahrodgers.net" target="_blank">www.johannahrodgers.net</a></div><br></div></div></div></div>