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　　May 1 marks the 50th anniversary of a specialcomputer language aimed at enabling collegestudents not trained in mathematics to usecomputers. The birth of BASIC is now seen as amajor step toward the era of personalcomputers.

　　50 years ago, computers were owned primarily by governments, businesses and universities,operated by programmers who wrote pages of instructions that consisted of mathematicalformulas.

　　Hoping their school’s computer could be used by students from other departments, twomathematics professors at Dartmouth College, John Kemeny and Thomas Kurtz, developed asimpler set of instructions. It was called Beginner’s All-Purpose Symbolic Instruction Code, orBASIC.

　　Kurtz spoke to VOA via Skype.

　　“We deliberately invented a language that was almost devoid of many of the technical detailsthat were present in other languages," said Kurtz.

　　BASIC translated English commands, such as IF…THEN, or GO...TO, into the numerical languagecomputers could understand.

　　Kurtz said the response was overwhelming.

　　“Not only our students loved getting onto the computer any time they wanted to, for whateverpurpose they wanted to, but even the faculty got interested. Of course not everybody, butmany of them," he said.

　　That happened just as computers became fast enough to execute many commands at thesame time, says Peggy Kidwell, Curator of Mathematics at the Smithsonian National Museum ofAmerican History.

　　“Now, that whole notion that anybody could run a computer permeates the whole world. And Iwould say that is not the immediate legacy of BASIC but it is a part of what was involved inbuilding up on BASIC," said Kidwell.

　　Kurtz and Kemeny released BASIC to the public, free of charge, so the language quickly becamewidespread. Kurtz says they hoped it would solve what they saw as a major upcomingproblem.

　　“That is to say, the computer is going to be very important in the world and most people didn’tknow anything about it because it was in the hands of experts," he said.

　　The rapid development of computers was followed by many improved versions of BASIC... andother easy to use languages.

　　Today, BASIC is used only by enthusiasts, but personal computers owe their existence to thefirst programing language that anyone could speak.

　　词汇解释

　　1.mathematical adj. 数学的，数学上的;精确的

　　He was lacking in mathematical training.

　　他数学方面训练不够。

　　2.numerical adj. 数值的;数字的;用数字表示的(等于numeric)

　　Your job is to group them by letter and put them in numerical order.

　　你的工作是把它们按字母编组，再把它们按数字顺序排序。

　　3.permeate vt. 渗透，透过;弥漫 vi. 弥漫;透入;散布

　　Water will easily permeate a cotton dress.

　　水很容易渗透棉布衣服。

　　内容解析

　　1.“We deliberately invented a language thatwas almost devoid of many of the technicaldetails that were present in other languages,"said Kurtz.

　　devoid of 没有;缺乏的

　　The letter was devoid of warmth and feeling.

　　这封信既无热情又无感情。

　　It makes me sick to read over such stereotypes devoid of content.

　　这种空洞无物的八股调，我看了就讨厌。

　　This house is totally devoid of furniture.

　　这所房子里一件家具都没有。

　　参考译文

　　50年前，最初只有政府、企业和大学有电脑，由那些编写数学公式构成的指令页的程序员来运作。

　　达特茅斯学院的两位数学教授约翰·凯默尼和托马斯·库尔茨希望其他学院的学生也能使用学校的电脑，就开发了一套简单的指令，这套指令名叫程序语言(BASIC)。

　　库尔茨通过Skype接受美国之音的采访。

　　“我们有意设计出一套避免其他语言中出现的技术细节。”

　　BASIC将英国指令，如IF…THEN或GO...TO转换成电脑能理解的数字语言。

　　库尔茨说其反响很大。

　　“我们的学生喜欢随时用电脑，可以做任何想做的事，而且我们的教员也对它感兴趣。当然不是每个人，是很多人都是。”

　　佩吉·基德韦尔是史密斯森国家历史博物馆数学馆长，他说这时电脑的运转速度开始快到足以同时处理很多指令。

　　“现在人人都能用电脑的理念已经深入全世界，我想说的是，这并不是BASIC的直接产物，而是基于BASIC而进行的开发的一部分。”

　　库尔茨和凯默尼将BASIC向公众公开，免费使用，这样这种语言很快就得到传播。库尔茨说他们希望BASIC能帮助解决即将到来的一个重大问题。

　　“电脑将在全世界变得非常重要，而大多数都对之不了解，因为电脑掌握在专家手中。”

　　伴随着电脑快速发展，出现了很多改进版的BASIC和其他容易使用的语言。

　　现在，不仅是爱好者使用BASIC，而且个人电脑的出现要归功于这种最早开发的人人都能使用的编程语言。

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