Thomas E. Kurtz has died

I interviewed Thomas Kurtz at his home in 2010 for my dissertation on the "computer utility" vision of the 60s and 70s (which foresaw a world of large computer utilities that would function like AT&T or an electrical power company, but for electronic services).

He was long-since retired, but still living in the hills of New Hampshire near Dartmouth. Unfortunately I can't find my interview notes right now, but I do remember that he was very kind and welcoming. What he and John Kemeny did at Dartmouth was truly remarkable. For them the technology (time-sharing and BASIC) was a means to an end of educating and empowering students, and ultimately society as a whole.

We would love to read your dissertation if you don't mind sharing.

Edit: Thank you for sharing! Looking forward to reading it.

It's available on my blog website: https://technicshistory.com/wp-content/uploads/2016/11/cfm_7...

I did capture there his most choice quote from the interview:

> Kurtz later said that he and Kemeny saw MAC's agenda as totally different from Dartmouth's--MIT was trying to design the theoretically best computer utility, with layers of security "and all that kind of crap."