This Day in History

May 31, 1926

BASIC Language Co-Inventor is Born

BASIC co-developer John Kemeny was born in Budapest, Hungary. In his 66-year life, Kemeny had a significant impact on the history of computers, particularly during his years at Dartmouth College, where he worked with Thomas Kurtz to create BASIC, an easy-to-use programming language for his computer students. Kemeny earlier had worked with John von Neumann in Los Alamos, N.M., during the Manhattan Project years of World War II.