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Dartmouth BASIC
Dartmouth BASIC is the original version of the BASIC programming language. It was designed by two professors at Dartmouth College, John G. Kemeny and Thomas E. Kurtz. With the underlying Dartmouth Time-Sharing System (DTSS), it offered an interactive programming environment to all undergraduates as well as the larger university community. Several versions were produced at Dartmouth, implemented by undergraduate students and operating as a compile and go system. The first version ran on 1 May 1964, and it was opened to general users in June. Upgrades followed, culminating in the seventh and final release in 1979. Dartmouth also introduced a dramatically updated version known as Structured BASIC (or SBASIC) in 1975, which added various structured programming concepts. SBASIC formed the basis of the American National Standards Institute-standard Full BASIC, Standard BASIC efforts in the early 1980s. Most dialects of BASIC trace their history to the Fourth Edition (which added, e.g., ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
True BASIC
True BASIC is a variant of the BASIC programming language descended from Dartmouth BASIC — the original BASIC. Both were created by college professors John G. Kemeny and Thomas E. Kurtz. History True BASIC traces its history to an offshoot of Dartmouth BASIC called Structured BASIC, or SBASIC for short. This was released sometime in 1975 or 1976, but was not installed as the mainline version of BASIC on the Dartmouth Time-Sharing System (DTSS) that supported the campus. Shortly after, Kemeny became involved in an effort to produce an ANSI standard BASIC in an attempt to bring together the many small variations of the language that had developed through the late 1960s and early 1970s. This effort initially focused on a system known as Minimal BASIC that was similar to earliest versions of Dartmouth BASIC, while later work was aimed at a Full BASIC that was essentially SBASIC with various extensions. By the early 1980s, tens of millions of home computers were running s ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Imperative Programming
In computer science, imperative programming is a programming paradigm of software that uses Statement (computer science), statements that change a program's state (computer science), state. In much the same way that the imperative mood in natural languages expresses commands, an imperative program consists of command (computing), commands for the computer to perform. Imperative programming focuses on describing ''how'' a program operates step by step (with general order of the steps being determined in source code by the placement of statements one below the other), rather than on high-level descriptions of its expected results. The term is often used in contrast to declarative programming, which focuses on ''what'' the program should accomplish without specifying all the details of ''how'' the program should achieve the result. Procedural programming Procedural programming is a type of imperative programming in which the program is built from one or more procedures (also termed s ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Microcomputer
A microcomputer is a small, relatively inexpensive computer having a central processing unit (CPU) made out of a microprocessor. The computer also includes memory and input/output (I/O) circuitry together mounted on a printed circuit board (PCB). Microcomputers became popular in the 1970s and 1980s with the advent of increasingly powerful microprocessors. The predecessors to these computers, mainframes and minicomputers, were comparatively much larger and more expensive (though indeed present-day mainframes such as the IBM System z machines use one or more custom microprocessors as their CPUs). Many microcomputers (when equipped with a keyboard and screen for input and output) are also personal computers (in the generic sense). An early use of the term "personal computer" in 1962 predates microprocessor-based designs. ''(See "Personal Computer: Computers at Companies" reference below)''. A "microcomputer" used as an embedded control system may have no human-readable input and ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Drum Memory
Drum memory was a magnetic data storage device invented by Gustav Tauschek in 1932 in Austria. Drums were widely used in the 1950s and into the 1960s as computer memory. Many early computers, called drum computers or drum machines, used drum memory as the main working memory of the computer. Some drums were also used as Auxiliary memory, secondary storage as for example various IBM_drum_storage, IBM drum storage drives and the UNIVAC FASTRAND series of drums. Drums were displaced as primary computer memory by magnetic core memory, which offered a better balance of size, speed, cost, reliability and potential for further improvements. Drums were then replaced by hard disk drives for secondary storage, which were both less expensive and offered denser storage. The manufacturing of drums ceased in the 1970s. Technical design A drum memory or drum storage unit contained a large metal cylinder, coated on the outside surface with a ferromagnetic recording material. It could be ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Assembly Language
In computing, assembly language (alternatively assembler language or symbolic machine code), often referred to simply as assembly and commonly abbreviated as ASM or asm, is any low-level programming language with a very strong correspondence between the instructions in the language and the architecture's machine code instructions. Assembly language usually has one statement per machine instruction (1:1), but constants, comments, assembler directives, symbolic labels of, e.g., memory locations, registers, and macros are generally also supported. The first assembly code in which a language is used to represent machine code instructions is found in Kathleen and Andrew Donald Booth's 1947 work, ''Coding for A.R.C.''. Assembly code is converted into executable machine code by a utility program referred to as an '' assembler''. The term "assembler" is generally attributed to Wilkes, Wheeler and Gill in their 1951 book '' The Preparation of Programs for an Electronic Dig ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
DARSIMCO
DARSIMCO, short for Dartmouth Simplified Code, was a simple programming language written by John Kemeny in 1956 that expanded simple mathematical operations into IBM 704 assembly language (Share Assembly Language, SAL). It was an attempt to simplify basic mathematical processing, a common theme in the 1950s, but found little use before the arrival of FORTRAN at MIT The Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) is a private research university in Cambridge, Massachusetts, United States. Established in 1861, MIT has played a significant role in the development of many areas of modern technology and sc ... the next year. Description This language was essentially a set of macros that expanded out user source code into a series of assembly language instructions, which were then compiled using the existing SAL assembler, Symbolic Assembly Program. For instance, the formula A + B = C would add the values in memory locations A and B and put the result in C. To do this, the ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Massachusetts Institute Of Technology
The Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) is a Private university, private research university in Cambridge, Massachusetts, United States. Established in 1861, MIT has played a significant role in the development of many areas of modern technology and science. In response to the increasing Technological and industrial history of the United States, industrialization of the United States, William Barton Rogers organized a school in Boston to create "useful knowledge." Initially funded by a land-grant universities, federal land grant, the institute adopted a Polytechnic, polytechnic model that stressed laboratory instruction in applied science and engineering. MIT moved from Boston to Cambridge in 1916 and grew rapidly through collaboration with private industry, military branches, and new federal basic research agencies, the formation of which was influenced by MIT faculty like Vannevar Bush. In the late twentieth century, MIT became a leading center for research in compu ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
IBM 704
The IBM 704 is the model name of a large digital computer, digital mainframe computer introduced by IBM in 1954. Designed by John Backus and Gene Amdahl, it was the first mass-produced computer with hardware for floating-point arithmetic. The IBM 704 ''Manual of operation'' states: The type 704 Electronic Data-Processing Machine is a large-scale, high-speed electronic calculator controlled by an internally stored program of the single address type. The 704 at that time was thus regarded as "pretty much the only computer that could handle complex math". The 704 was a significant improvement over the earlier IBM 701 in terms of architecture and implementation. Like the 701, the 704 used vacuum-tube logic circuitry, but increased the instruction size from 18-bit computing, 18 bits to 36-bit computing, 36 bits, the same as the memory's word size. Changes from the 701 include the use of magnetic-core memory instead of Williams tubes, floating-point arithmetic instructions, 15 ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
BASIC Computer Games
''BASIC Computer Games'' is a compilation of type-in computer games in the BASIC programming language collected by David H. Ahl. Some of the games were written or modified by Ahl as well. Among its better-known games are '' Hamurabi'' and '' Super Star Trek''. Originally published by DEC in 1973 as ''101 BASIC Computer Games'', the book was so popular that it had two more printing runs, the last in March 1975. The programs in these books were mostly written in the BASIC dialect found on Digital's minicomputers, although some could not be converted and appeared in different dialects like Dartmouth BASIC. In 1974, Ahl left DEC. He purchased the rights to the book and republished it under the new name. With the release of the first microcomputers, and Microsoft BASIC soon after, the collection added several new games, removed some, and those that remained from the original were ported to this dialect. By the early 1980s, with tens of millions of home computers in the market, i ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
People's Computer Company
People's Computer Company (PCC) was an organization, a newsletter (the ''People's Computer Company Newsletter'') and, later, a quasiperiodical called the ''Dragonsmoke''. PCC was founded and produced by Dennis Allison, Bob Albrecht and George Firedrake in Menlo Park, California in the early 1970s. The first newsletter, published in October 1972, announced itself with the following introduction: Computers are mostly used against people instead of for people; used to control people instead of to free them; Time to change all that - we need a... Peoples Computer Company. It was published bimonthly. The name was chosen in reference to Janis Joplin's rock group Big Brother and the Holding Company. The newsletter ceased publication in 1981. History PCC was one of the first organizations to recognize the potential of Tiny BASIC in the nascent field of personal computing when it published that language's design specification in their newsletter. This ultimately led to the design of a ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
HP Time-Shared BASIC
HP Time-Shared BASIC (HP TSB) is a BASIC, BASIC programming language Interpreter (computing), interpreter for Hewlett-Packard's HP 2100#HP 2000, HP 2000 line of minicomputer-based time-sharing computer systems. TSB is historically notable as the platform that released the first public versions of the game ''Star Trek (text game), Star Trek''. The system implements a dialect of BASIC as well as a rudimentary user account and program library that allows multiple people to use the system at once. The systems were a major force in the early-to-mid 1970s and generated a large number of programs. HP maintained a database of contributed-programs and customers could order them on punched tape for a nominal fee. Most BASICs of the 1970s trace their history to the original Dartmouth BASIC of the 1960s, but early versions of Dartmouth did not handle String (computer science), string variables or offer string manipulation features. Vendors added their own solutions; HP used a system simila ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
