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Tiny BASIC (1975)

The Altair 8800 — considered the first mass-produced personal computer — appeared on the January 1975 cover of Popular Electronics. It had only 4K of RAM and no software. Bob Albrecht saw an opportunity and went to Dennis Allison, who taught computer science at Stanford, asking him to design a stripped-down BASIC that would be easy to use and fit in minimal memory.

Allison published his framework for "Tiny BASIC" in People's Computer Company (PCC) in three parts during early 1975. In December 1975, Dick Whipple and John Arnold responded with a Tiny BASIC requiring only 3K of RAM.

Palo Alto Tiny BASIC

In 1976, Dr. Li-Chen Wang wrote the first fully usable Tiny BASIC for the 8080 microcomputer. It appeared in the May 1976 issue of Dr. Dobb's Journal of Computer Calisthenics & Orthodontia. This is considered the first known freeware program. The source code contained the strings "All Wrongs Reserved" and "Copyleft" — predating the formal free software movement by years.

"Pretend you are seven years old and don't care much about floating-point arithmetic... And your home computer is kind of small, not too much memory. Consider then, Tiny BASIC." — Dennis Allison & Others, PCC

Many readers took Allison's program and modified it. Two of the most successful versions came from Li-Chen Wang and Tom Pittman. The Tiny BASIC authors were not trying to use it as a path to wealth — and this enabled thousands of programmers to begin experimenting with microcomputers.