page_title: BASIC
section_title: Spread on minicomputers
hierarchical_section_title: BASIC / Spread on minicomputers
caption_attribution_description: English: In this historical image, taken in 1974 in the ESO offices in Santiago, Chile, we can see the Austrian astronomer Rudi Albrecht, pencil in hand, poring over code in front of a teletype. He was working on software for the Spectrum Scanner attached to the ESO 1-metre telescope located at the La Silla Observatory. The data were processed in Santiago using the Hewlett Packard 2000F minicomputer which can be seen behind the printer. This bulky computer, with one processor and a breathtaking 16 kilobytes of magnetic-core memory (!), stored the results on magnetic tape, ready for further processing by visiting astronomers on computers at their home institutes. To handle files on tape that were larger than the available memory, Albrecht developed a virtual memory system, which he contributed to the Hewlett Packard Software Center. Please note that the computer in this image has been incorrectly identified by its original owner. The computer shown is a HP 2100 computer (2100A or 2100S), with two 7970 tape drives (7970A, B, C or E), 7900-series hard disk drive, 2748 paper tape reader and 2767A impact printer.
context_page_description: BASIC is a family of general-purpose, high-level programming languages whose design philosophy emphasizes ease of use. The original version was designed by John G. Kemeny and Thomas E. Kurtz and released at Dartmouth College in 1964. They wanted to enable students in fields other than science and mathematics to use computers. At the time, nearly all use of computers required writing custom software, which was something only scientists and mathematicians tended to learn.
  In addition to the language itself, Kemeny and Kurtz developed the Dartmouth Time Sharing System, which allowed multiple users to edit and run BASIC programs at the same time. This general model became very popular on minicomputer systems like the PDP-11 and Data General Nova in the late 1960s and early 1970s. Hewlett-Packard produced an entire computer line for this method of operation, introducing the HP2000 series in the late 1960s and continuing sales into the 1980s. Many early video games trace their history to one of these versions of BASIC.
  The emergence of early microcomputers in the mid-1970s led to the development of a number of BASIC dialects, including Microsoft BASIC in 1975.
context_section_description: BASIC, by its very nature of being small, was naturally suited to porting to the minicomputer market, which was emerging at the same time as the time-sharing services. These machines had very small main memory, perhaps as little as 4 kB in modern terminology, and lacked high-performance storage like hard drives that make compilers practical. On these systems, BASIC was normally implemented as an interpreter rather than a compiler due to the reduced need for working memory.
  A particularly important example was HP Time-Shared BASIC, which, like the original Dartmouth system, used two computers working together to implement a time-sharing system. The first, a low-end machine in the HP 2100 series, was used to control user input and save and load their programs to tape or disk. The other, a high-end version of the same underlying machine, ran the programs and generated output. For a cost of about $100,000, one could own a machine capable of running between 16 and 32 users at the same time. The system, bundled as the HP 2000, was the first mini platform to offer time-sharing and was an immediate runaway success, catapulting HP to become the third-largest vendor in the minicomputer space, behind DEC and Data General (DG).
  DEC, the leader in the minicomputer space since the mid-1960s, had initially ignored BASIC. This was due to their work with RAND Corporation, who had purchased a PDP-6 to run their JOSS language, which was conceptually very similar to BASIC. This led DEC to introduce a smaller, cleaned up version of JOSS known as FOCAL, which they heavily promoted in the late 1960s. However, with timesharing systems widely offering BASIC, and all of their competition in the minicomputer space doing the same, DEC's customers were clamoring for BASIC. After management repeatedly ignored their pleas, David H. Ahl took it upon himself to buy a BASIC for the PDP-8, which was a major success in the education market. By the early 1970s, FOCAL and JOSS had been forgotten and BASIC had become almost universal in the minicomputer market. DEC would go on to introduce their updated version, BASIC-PLUS, for use on the RSTS/E time-sharing operating system.
  During this period a number of simple text-based games were written in BASIC, most notably Mike Mayfield's Star Trek. David Ahl collected these, some ported from FOCAL, and published them in an educational newsletter he compiled. He later collected a number of these into book form, 101 BASIC Computer Games, published in 1973. During the same period, Ahl was involved in the creation of a small computer for education use, an early personal computer. When management refused to support the concept, Ahl left DEC in 1974 to found the seminal computer magazine, Creative Computing. The book remained popular, and was re-published on several occasions.
caption: The HP 2000 system was designed to run time-shared BASIC as its primary task.
exif: {"Image ImageDescription": "In this historical image, taken in 1974 in the ESO offices in Santiago, Chile, we can see the\u00a0Austrian astronomer Rudi Albrecht, pencil in hand, poring over code in front of a teletype. He was working on software for the Spectrum Scanner attached to the ESO 1-metre telescope\u00a0located at the La Silla Observatory. The data were processed in Santiago using the Hewlett Packard 2116 minicomputer which can be seen behind the printer. This bulky computer, with one processor and a breathtaking 16 kilobytes of magnetic-core memory\u00a0(!), stored the results on magnetic tape, ready for further processing by visiting astronomers on computers at their home institutes. To handle files on tape that were larger than the available memory, Albrecht developed a virtual memory system, which he contributed to the Hewlett Packard Software Center.", "Image Artist": "Hans Hermann Heyer", "Image Copyright": "ESO"}