offered a solution; a single machine could divide up its processing time among many users, giving them the illusion of having a (slow) computer to themselves. Small programs would return results in a few seconds. This led to increasing interest in a system using time-sharing and a new language specifically for use by non-STEM students.

Kemeny wrote the first version of BASIC. The acronym BASIC comes from the name of an unpublished paper by Thomas Kurtz. The new language was heavily patterned on FORTRAN