November 28, 2024: Thomas E. Kurtz, 1928-2024

[Rendu]

The Before Times... when rocks were still soft and puppies were the oldest things on Earth. i.e. 1974

Volunteering in the high school library my freshman year, bored because no one is checking out books, I flip through one of the textbooks for THE computer science course that only seniors are allowed to take, with the instructor's permission. You didn't even get your own textbook, you had to sign one out and return it to the desk. I expect to be mystified. Instead, it makes perfect sense. It's simple, actually. Had to wait three more years to get access to the computer (no monitor with a blinking cursor- a hard-copy thermal printer connected to Syracuse University's mainframe with a telephone and an acoustic coupler. One of my classmates wrote a program whose sole purpose was to make the coupler play "The Stars and Stripes Forever" with its little trills and squawks.)
But BASIC was the portal into that world of the future. Thank you, Thomas E. Kurtz.