Introduction to BASIC  BASIC was originally implemented as a
combined computer language and command interpreter invented in
1964 at Dartmouth College by J. Kemeny and T. Kurtz. it was an
important part of a project to make timeshared computer access
available to a large community, in this case Dartmouth College.
It was first implemented on a GE 225 computer. BASIC combines
both programming and computer control into a single interface.
The language is a simple set of variable assignments, control
flow and data handling. It was designed to be easier for most
users than Fortran, but the Dartmouth version, surprisingly,
included matrix operations which have not been part of most
other implementations. The computer control allows the user to
perform simple commands such as file save & load and program
start and stop.  Because BASIC can be interpreted, and because
more or less useful variants can be implemented with a small
interpreter, it was an attractive choice as a high-level
language for the earliest microcom