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The 1960s and '70s were a feverish era in Dartmouth computing—a period that
saw the creation and implementation of software and systems that made Dartmouth
a leader in academic computing and brought computing out of the realm of
experts and into everyday life.
Former undergraduate "sysprogs" (system programmers) at their June 14 reunion.
Seated in front: Brig B. (Chip) Elliot Jr.'76; row kneeling: David Rice '67, T.
Gary Broughton '66, Louis F. Fernandez '73, Elliot Noma '72, David Pearson '75,
John McGeachie '65, Tuck '75, and Steven Reiss '72; middle row: Robert
Hargraves '61, Christian Walker '73, Thayer '77, Allan (Bicky) Jayne '73,
Thayer '74, Douglas Rice '76, Gregory Dobbs '69, Sidney Marshall '65, Thayer
'72, Charles (Kip) Moore '65, Ronald Harris '71, David Wright '78, Jennifer
Kemeny '76, Professor of Mathematics Emeritus Thomas Kurtz, and Thomas Martin
'63; back row: Andrew Behrens '71, Steven Hobbs '69, Ronald Martin '67, James
Keim '72, August (Gus) Reinig '80, Richard Lacey '67, Warren Montgomery '73, M.
Alexander Colvin '77, Barry Hayes '80, L. Carl Pedersen '73, Stephen Garland
'63, Phillip DiBello '82, and G. Blake Meike '79. (Photo by Joseph Mehling
'69)
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And who were the ones tackling the challenges that cropped up at every step
of the way? Mainly 18-to-22-year-olds. While other institutions were also
trying to use computers in new ways, the work at those schools was being done
by graduate students and faculty. At Dartmouth, the work was in the hands of
undergraduates.
On June 14, the College hosted a reunion for the former undergraduate
"sysprogs"—short for "system programmers"—to thank a group whose work changed
computing and changed Dartmouth's image in the outside world, says Thomas
Kurtz, professor of mathematics emeritus and one of the faculty who guided the
sysprogs. "All these kids were drawn to Dartmouth because of the tremendous
opportunity to work with computers."
For the sysprogs themselves, it was a memorable era, says Ronald Harris '71,
now retired from a career in business computing. "The professional staff and
faculty really gave us undergraduates the responsibility for building the
Dartmouth time-sharing system, although with guidance from older and wiser
heads. We would get assignments like, 'Here's what we want: go invent it.' The
understanding was, nobody's done it before—figure it out. It was an incredibly
creative environment, incredibly motivated, incredibly diverse."
One of the College's first computers, a 1964 GE-235, was the machine in use
at the inception that year of Dartmouth's two computing innovations, the
Dartmouth Time-Sharing System (DTSS) and the BASIC (which stands for Beginners'
All-purpose Symbolic Instruction Code) computer language. BASIC was created by
John Kemeny, then a professor of mathematics who would later become president
of Dartmouth, and Kurtz, with the help of the undergraduate sysprogs.
Time-sharing allowed multiple users to access the same computer by
connecting them in short spurts to the main computer. While not the first
time-sharing system—MIT had a system starting in 1961—DTSS was the first aimed
primarily at non-technical users. By the late 1960s, students at 50 high
schools and colleges were using the system through remote terminals connected
by telephone to Dartmouth's mainframe computers. "Today's packet switching
networks (e.g. the Internet) owe a great deal to the development of this
time-sharing system conceptually and technically," wrote Jay Robert Hauben in a
profile of Kemeny in Hauben's 1995 book, Computer Pioneers.
Meanwhile, Kemeny and Kurtz realized the need for a new computer language
that could be easily learned and accessible to typical college students. With
the undergraduate sysprogs' help, they developed BASIC, which used logical
words, such as "hello" and "goodbye," instead of the more obtuse vocabulary of
the other programs of the time. "BASIC made personal computers possible,"
Hauben wrote.
"We can argue, and I have many times, that what we did, under the leadership
of Kemeny and Kurtz, laid the foundation for the modern computing age," says
Harris. "It was Kemeny who said if you make computers easy to use, then
ordinary people will make them a part of their lives. That was Kemeny's idea
and it was Dartmouth Time-Sharing that proved he was right."
By REBECCA BAILEY
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