The development of computers is closely intertwined with the history of cryptography, and vice versa. The mechanization of cryptography during the early 20th century slowly began to exceed the skills of cryptanalysts to break such encryption. The only way to break these ciphers was to also mechanize the breaking of ciphers. Colossus, the first programmable digital computer, was developed exactly for that purpose during World War II.
Until the early 1950s, computers were only used by government agencies for codebreaking, the military, weapons development and research. In 1951, the UNIVAC was the first commercially produced digital computer, but computers were mainly used by universities and large corporations like IBM and General Electric. Programming those large mainframe computers was a complex task.
Making Computers Accessible
This changed when Professors John Kemeny and Tom Kurtz from Dartmouth research university got the, I quote, crazy idea to develop a simple language to make programming easier and more accessible for non-technical undergraduate students.
However, they first had to buy a computer. Since there was no budget for computers, they bought a Librascope LGP-30 computer, an optical tape reader and a typewriter console for a total of $37,040 and booked it under furniture. That's $383,434 in present 2023.
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Librascope LGP-30 with console typewriter. Source: Bob Fleischer - Wikipedia. |
John Kemeny wrote the compiler to translated the new language into machine language for the LGP-30. This new language was named BASIC (Beginners' All-purpose Symbolic Instruction Code) and made programming easier than ever.
Moreover, to make BASIC accessible to as many students as possible, they implemented time sharing (sharing computing resource) on the LGP-30 computer to enable several students to independently work on their own console typewriter, remotely and simultaneous, processed on one single computer. This idea resulted in students lining up to learn programming with BASIC, the computer language that remains popular to this day.
Crypto Going Mainstream
For many people, BASIC was their first programming language when small computers became commercially available in the late 1970s. This was the era where people who bought a computer usually also learned to program. They were often called nerds, because… who on earth needs a computer? Yeah, sure.
The rapidly growing number of computers and users also spurred the development of crypto algorithms by others than government and the few commercial firms that build crypto equipment. This fueled the everlasting competition between codemakers and codebreakers, and between state and citizens. This evolution also democratized cryptography and digital privacy.
All this started when two professors decide to make programming easier. More on the development of BASIC in the below video.
Birth of BASIC - Dartmouth College
More on Cryptography and Computers
On our website you find a brief history of cryptography and learn more about the Colossus computer, used by the British codebreaker during the Second World War to break the German Lorenz SZ40/42 machine, used for their high-level communications.
More on the LGP-30 computer at the Computer Museum Stuttgart and many detailed photos at the Time-Line Computer Archive. Also read Fifty Years of BASIC on Time.