BASIC's creators used a similar computer four years later to develop the programming language. Credit: GE / Wikipedia A brochure for the GE 210 computer from 1964.

Thomas E. Kurtz, a mathematician and inventor of the simplified computer programming language known as BASIC, which allowed students to operate early computers and eventually propelled generations ...

“All of us who have written code in the past 60 years can thank Thomas Kurtz,” said Bill Gates, Microsoft’s co-founder, who as a teenager created his first computer program in Basic and ...