TIME-SHARING PUNCH CARDS

Computing pioneers John Kemeny and Thomas Kurtz designed the Dartmouth Time Sharing System (DTSS) and the BASIC programming language to be “very easy to learn” because they wanted students beyond the math and science departments to use computers. At its peak, DTSS, which ran from 1964 through 1999, depended on punch cards such as these to host 300 simultaneous users. It was the first successful time-sharing system ever. The work of Kemeny and Kurtz put Dartmouth in the fore- front of computer access and networking technology through the 1980s.