I was 5 or 6 when I got my first sense of the joys of computer programming. This was in the early 1980s, when few people had a computer. One day, my dad brought home a Sinclair ZX Spectrum, one of ...

Thomas E. Kurtz, a mathematician and inventor of the simplified computer programming language known as BASIC, which allowed students to operate early computers and eventually propelled generations ...

Long before the days of laptops and smartphones, Thomas E. Kurtz worked to give more students access to computers. That work helped propel generations into a new world. Kurtz has died at 96.