BASIC

Before the 1960's, computers ran on large mainframe machines which had to be kept in powerfully air-conditioned rooms to keep them from overheating. These mainframes could only recieve instructions from punch cards inserted into the machine. However, in 1963, a team at Dartmouth college, with leaders John Kemeny and Thomas Kurtz, invented a new "language" for computer programmers. BASIC, or Beginner's All-Purpose Symbolic Instruction Code, was intended to be a language for people to unlock the power of the computer, specifically teach students about programming concepts. After BASIC begam a popular language among programmers, the founders of Microsoft Paul Allen and Bill Gates created their own version of BASIC and changed the way that computers would be programmed forever.