In Dartmouth College, USA, a simplified language was developed. It was based on Fortran and was designed as a simpler language and easier to learn. This language was called Basic (Beginners’ All purpose Symbolic Instruction Code) and first appeared in 1960 .

In the early days, the emphasis was on ‘easy to learn’ and ‘using a minimum amount of memory’ as memory was very expensive. These two attributes made it very useful in colleges but was largely ignored ‘in the real world’. As microprocessors appeared and gave rise to the microcomputer, the benefits of low memory requirements gave it a renewed popularity and it ‘took off’.