As a loyal reader, you know that I am in the midst of a drive to create a highway historical marker honoring the creation of the computer language BASIC and the Dartmouth Time-Sharing System. (Here’s a reminder, if you need it.) I gathered more than enough signatures at Tuesday night’s Science Cafe NH in Concord and now have to put together the whole application to present to the Division of Historical Resources.
It turns out I’m not alone! The Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers – IEEE, as in “eye-triple-ee” – in the middle of the process of having an “Engineering Milestone” plaque honoring the development of BASIC placed at the Dartmouth campus. (There is, so far as I know, only one other IEEE plaque in New Hampshire, one that honors Ralph Baer’s development of the first interactive video game while he was working for Sanders Associates in Nashua. Several readers have suggested that for my next historical marker I do something about that event.)
With any luck we’ll be able to wrap these two accomplishments together.
By the way, while it’s excellent that IEEE wants to shine a light on one of New Hampshire’s premiere tech accomplishments, I think my push is more important because it will draw the attention of the non-geek community.
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David,
It’s great to read of your efforts. You may recall, I am Ralph’s son and Trustee and we have crossed paths previously. I’ll look forward to hearing from you.
It’s not very geeky, and barely relevant to your article, sorry, but diligent NH historian/genealogist Janice Webster Brown has a pretty good article about Sarah Mildred Long, after whom the bypass bridge is named: http://www.cowhampshireblog.com/2018/09/18/portsmouth-nh-executive-secretary-and-named-bridge-honoree-sarah-mildred-long/
Good luck with the BASIC thing. I wrote a lot of code in various versions of BASIC. I envision some future archaeologist may excavate a landfill, find my old floppies, extract the data, and exclaim “Eureka! What crappy code!”