Dartmouth BASIC, Version One

The very first BASIC ever written, with its 15 keywords.

Where it is/was used

• GE-225 and Datanet DN-30, the pair known and sold as GE-265

Noteworthy characteristics

• LET was required for assignments and expressions. A direct mention of a variable was not valid, as it became in later BASICs.
• Every variable might be used as an array of 10 elements, numbered from 1, even without being declared with DIM.
• It was not meant to create interactive programs. No INPUT, dear. The DATA statement was the original way to give something for the program to munch.

Environment and usage

TO DO: notes about the REPL or IDE used, keyboard shortcuts and commands, command-line options for compiling and linking, environment variables which might be set…

Extensions

TO DO: Famous libraries tools and extension packages made for this BASIC

Curiosities

TO DO: Historical notes, anecdotes, what people said about it

Related to...

Influenced by

• link to other page of this section - TO DO: which are the noticeable or assumed influences

Influence for

• link to other page of this section - TO DO: which are the noticeable or assumed influences

Versions and successors

• list of other BASICs

References

• A Manual for Basic - 1 October 1964 - Available at http://www.bitsavers.org/pdf/dartmouth/BASIC_Oct64.pdf last check 2023-03-19