[OT] BASIC Factoid (was Re: [Tutor] Functions !)

[alan.gauld@bt.com]

> > ISTR BASIC itself was invented by Gary Kildall and AN.Other?
> > Mr Kildall of course went on to give us CP/M and GEM :-)
> 
> Not quite, although the last name of both creators also 
> starts with a 'K' :)
> 
>   http://www.phys.uu.nl/~bergmann/history.html

Quite right, I was 10 years too late and thinking of the 
first BASIC for CP/M, as shown from this snippet about Kildall:

----------
In 1973 Shugart gave Intel a sample 8" floppy disk. Gary was 
immediately intrigued by the device and with a friend, John Torode, 
built a controller interface to an Intellec-80. Gary, and his 
students, wrote a small control program, which he called CP/M 
(Control Program/Microcomputer). It enabled him to read and 
write files to and from the disk. Gary copied the commands and 
file-naming conventions from the DEC PDP-10 VMS operating system. 
Gordon Eubanks, one of Gary's students, created a BASIC 
interpreter for the system.
-----------

So endeth the history lesson :-)

Alan g.